"The U.S. and the Holocaust" The Homeless, The Tempest-Tossed (1942-)

1 00:00:01,070 --> 00:00:03,244 Viewers like you make this program possible. 2 00:00:03,279 --> 00:00:05,350 Support your local PBS station. 3 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:13,074 4 00:00:19,467 --> 00:00:27,165 ♪ 5 00:00:27,199 --> 00:00:29,074 Daniel Mendelsohn: There are already people who think that 6 00:00:29,098 --> 00:00:32,135 every Jew who died in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz, 7 00:00:32,170 --> 00:00:35,794 died in a concentration camp, died in a gas chamber. 8 00:00:35,828 --> 00:00:39,763 No. There's whole chapters of this story. 9 00:00:39,798 --> 00:00:42,801 ♪ 10 00:00:42,835 --> 00:00:45,114 Narrator: As hard as Shmiel Jaeger had tried, 11 00:00:45,148 --> 00:00:47,357 he had been unable to get himself, 12 00:00:47,392 --> 00:00:49,808 his wife Ester, and his 4 daughters 13 00:00:49,842 --> 00:00:53,536 out of occupied Poland to America. 14 00:00:53,570 --> 00:00:57,022 German troops had reached his hometown of Bolechow 15 00:00:57,057 --> 00:01:00,129 in the summer of 1941. 16 00:01:00,163 --> 00:01:03,960 Within weeks, his daughter Ruchele was murdered. 17 00:01:03,994 --> 00:01:05,272 ♪ 18 00:01:05,306 --> 00:01:06,894 That was only the beginning. 19 00:01:06,928 --> 00:01:09,103 ♪ 20 00:01:09,138 --> 00:01:10,839 Mendelsohn: There was another roundup, which was 21 00:01:10,863 --> 00:01:13,418 the biggest roundup in my family's town, 22 00:01:13,452 --> 00:01:18,837 2,500 people, and my great-aunt Ester 23 00:01:18,871 --> 00:01:24,843 and the youngest girl, Bronia, who was 13 at the time. 24 00:01:24,877 --> 00:01:27,604 They kept them, this huge group of people, 25 00:01:27,639 --> 00:01:32,126 in the square outside of the city hall, 26 00:01:32,161 --> 00:01:35,336 and there were a lot of atrocities that took place, 27 00:01:35,371 --> 00:01:37,166 mostly against children. 28 00:01:37,200 --> 00:01:39,892 There were some Soviet documents that had come to light, 29 00:01:39,927 --> 00:01:42,792 including a report, and they listed 30 00:01:42,826 --> 00:01:45,864 all the children who had been shot, and actually, 31 00:01:45,898 --> 00:01:49,074 Bronia was the first child on the list. 32 00:01:49,109 --> 00:01:51,628 This was in September of 1942. 33 00:01:52,767 --> 00:01:54,252 You know, they were throwing children 34 00:01:54,286 --> 00:01:56,564 off the balconies of the city hall, 35 00:01:56,599 --> 00:01:59,153 really terrible stuff. 36 00:01:59,188 --> 00:02:04,848 Whoever survived the couple of days of the roundup 37 00:02:04,883 --> 00:02:08,404 were shipped to Belzec, and that's where 38 00:02:08,438 --> 00:02:13,547 my great-aunt Ester died in the gas chambers. 39 00:02:13,581 --> 00:02:18,966 ♪ 40 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:23,073 I was able to find out that Shmiel was hiding 41 00:02:23,108 --> 00:02:26,076 with his second daughter, Frydka, 42 00:02:26,111 --> 00:02:27,630 and that was because there was 43 00:02:27,664 --> 00:02:30,529 a Catholic Polish boy, who was in love with her. 44 00:02:30,564 --> 00:02:33,498 And he was helping to hide her in the home 45 00:02:33,532 --> 00:02:35,534 of this local school teacher. 46 00:02:35,569 --> 00:02:37,812 And that for some unknown amount of time, 47 00:02:37,847 --> 00:02:39,642 they were being successfully hidden, 48 00:02:39,676 --> 00:02:41,437 the father and the daughter, 49 00:02:41,471 --> 00:02:46,649 in an underground dugout 50 00:02:46,683 --> 00:02:50,618 until someone betrayed them. 51 00:02:50,653 --> 00:02:52,068 ♪ 52 00:02:52,102 --> 00:02:54,104 And they found them, and they took them, 53 00:02:54,139 --> 00:02:56,003 and they shot them both, 54 00:02:56,037 --> 00:02:59,144 and then they killed the school teacher, too. 55 00:02:59,179 --> 00:03:00,870 ♪ 56 00:03:00,904 --> 00:03:04,149 The oldest daughter Lorka joined a partisan group 57 00:03:04,184 --> 00:03:07,014 that operated with some Polish partisans 58 00:03:07,048 --> 00:03:09,327 in a nearby forest. 59 00:03:09,361 --> 00:03:12,813 She was killed when the whole partisan group was wiped out. 60 00:03:12,847 --> 00:03:15,816 ♪ 61 00:03:15,850 --> 00:03:18,715 Except for my poor great-aunt Ester, 62 00:03:18,750 --> 00:03:21,408 nobody was killed in a camp. 63 00:03:21,442 --> 00:03:23,203 They were killed in all different ways, 64 00:03:23,237 --> 00:03:25,377 in all different manners, and I think that already 65 00:03:25,412 --> 00:03:27,207 is being erased, 66 00:03:27,241 --> 00:03:30,693 the particularity of what happened. 67 00:03:30,727 --> 00:03:35,663 ♪ 68 00:03:35,698 --> 00:03:37,147 Woman: Here's the tragedy. 69 00:03:37,182 --> 00:03:39,840 Millions of people could not be rescued. 70 00:03:39,874 --> 00:03:41,428 They're in the hands of the Germans. 71 00:03:41,462 --> 00:03:42,981 They're deep into Eastern Europe. 72 00:03:43,015 --> 00:03:46,295 They're in Germany and Austria and France, 73 00:03:46,329 --> 00:03:47,710 Belgium, Netherlands. 74 00:03:47,744 --> 00:03:49,194 ♪ 75 00:03:49,229 --> 00:03:53,025 But there were people who had gotten to Portugal. 76 00:03:53,060 --> 00:03:54,717 Who had gotten to Spain. 77 00:03:54,751 --> 00:03:57,789 There are people who eventually get to North Africa. 78 00:03:57,823 --> 00:04:01,171 If you had taken more people from those places, 79 00:04:01,206 --> 00:04:03,588 maybe more refugees could have come in. 80 00:04:03,622 --> 00:04:06,694 Maybe more people escaping could have come in. 81 00:04:06,729 --> 00:04:10,111 Are we talking of rescues of hundreds of thousands? 82 00:04:10,146 --> 00:04:12,838 No. But if it's your family, 83 00:04:12,873 --> 00:04:14,771 it doesn't matter if it's one. 84 00:04:14,806 --> 00:04:21,640 ♪ 85 00:04:25,195 --> 00:04:28,785 Narrator: Just before the United States entered the Second World War, 86 00:04:28,820 --> 00:04:31,616 Germany had barred the emigration of Jews 87 00:04:31,650 --> 00:04:35,067 from any country it had captured. 88 00:04:35,102 --> 00:04:38,519 For them, occupied Europe had now become a prison 89 00:04:38,554 --> 00:04:42,005 to which Adolf Hitler held the key. 90 00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:44,249 ♪ 91 00:04:44,284 --> 00:04:48,322 Americans were still in no mood to welcome immigrants. 92 00:04:48,357 --> 00:04:50,393 The anxiety about alien subversion 93 00:04:50,428 --> 00:04:52,361 that preceded Pearl Harbor 94 00:04:52,395 --> 00:04:55,502 only intensified afterward. 95 00:04:55,536 --> 00:04:59,126 FDR declared the West Coast a "military zone" 96 00:04:59,160 --> 00:05:03,648 and forced 120,000 persons of Japanese descent 97 00:05:03,682 --> 00:05:06,823 who lived there into internment camps. 98 00:05:06,858 --> 00:05:09,343 Most of them were citizens. 99 00:05:09,378 --> 00:05:11,000 ♪ 100 00:05:11,034 --> 00:05:14,003 The Justice Department also interned thousands of 101 00:05:14,037 --> 00:05:18,628 so-called "enemy aliens"... German and Italian immigrants 102 00:05:18,663 --> 00:05:21,355 suspected of fascist sentiments. 103 00:05:21,390 --> 00:05:23,909 ♪ 104 00:05:23,944 --> 00:05:25,601 "This war can end in two ways," 105 00:05:25,635 --> 00:05:28,776 Hitler insisted in early 1942. 106 00:05:28,811 --> 00:05:32,366 "Either the extermination of the Aryan peoples 107 00:05:32,401 --> 00:05:35,369 or the disappearance of Jewry from Europe." 108 00:05:35,404 --> 00:05:37,371 ♪ 109 00:05:37,406 --> 00:05:40,961 Within a few months, the first reports reached the American public 110 00:05:40,995 --> 00:05:44,205 that the Nazis had begun systematically murdering 111 00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:49,314 every Jewish man, woman, and child on the continent. 112 00:05:49,349 --> 00:05:51,005 ♪ 113 00:05:51,040 --> 00:05:53,387 Jewish-Americans and their supporters pleaded that 114 00:05:53,422 --> 00:05:57,115 somehow, something be done to stop the killing. 115 00:05:57,149 --> 00:06:00,360 But President Roosevelt and his commanders were convinced 116 00:06:00,394 --> 00:06:02,638 that only by crushing the Nazis 117 00:06:02,672 --> 00:06:05,744 and winning the war as soon as possible 118 00:06:05,779 --> 00:06:07,746 could the Allies put an end to it. 119 00:06:07,781 --> 00:06:09,403 ♪ 120 00:06:09,438 --> 00:06:11,129 Lipstadt: The mantra was, 121 00:06:11,163 --> 00:06:13,234 we'll rescue these people by winning the war. 122 00:06:13,269 --> 00:06:14,822 ♪ 123 00:06:14,857 --> 00:06:17,998 The problem was, and many people knew this, 124 00:06:18,032 --> 00:06:20,587 and certainly within government circles, 125 00:06:20,621 --> 00:06:22,934 by the time the war would be won, 126 00:06:22,968 --> 00:06:24,970 very few of these people would be alive. 127 00:06:25,005 --> 00:06:26,455 [Sizzling] 128 00:06:26,489 --> 00:06:30,666 But the dominant idea in the American government 129 00:06:30,700 --> 00:06:34,670 is any act of rescue will be 130 00:06:34,704 --> 00:06:38,121 a diversion from the war effort. 131 00:06:38,156 --> 00:06:39,606 ♪ 132 00:06:39,640 --> 00:06:41,918 Both could've been done at the same time. 133 00:06:41,953 --> 00:06:46,164 But clearly nobody wanted these people. 134 00:06:46,198 --> 00:06:47,683 ♪ 135 00:06:47,717 --> 00:06:49,443 It's not one of the things that will go down 136 00:06:49,478 --> 00:06:54,034 in the long annals of good things America did. 137 00:06:54,068 --> 00:06:56,208 It goes in a different book. 138 00:06:56,243 --> 00:07:04,243 ♪ 139 00:07:10,050 --> 00:07:13,156 ♪ 140 00:07:13,191 --> 00:07:16,332 Girl: Writing in a diary is a really strange experience 141 00:07:16,366 --> 00:07:18,058 for someone like me. 142 00:07:18,092 --> 00:07:22,062 Not only because I've never written anything before, 143 00:07:22,096 --> 00:07:25,790 but also because it seems to me that 144 00:07:25,824 --> 00:07:29,172 later on neither I nor anyone else 145 00:07:29,207 --> 00:07:31,520 will be interested in the musings of 146 00:07:31,554 --> 00:07:33,867 a 13-year-old schoolgirl. 147 00:07:33,901 --> 00:07:35,524 ♪ 148 00:07:35,558 --> 00:07:37,284 Oh, well, it doesn't matter. 149 00:07:37,318 --> 00:07:40,839 I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need 150 00:07:40,874 --> 00:07:43,842 to get all kinds of things off my chest. 151 00:07:43,877 --> 00:07:45,948 ♪ 152 00:07:45,982 --> 00:07:47,950 Narrator: In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, 153 00:07:47,984 --> 00:07:50,677 Otto and Edith Frank struggled to provide 154 00:07:50,711 --> 00:07:54,301 as normal a life as possible for their family. 155 00:07:54,335 --> 00:08:01,101 June 12, 1942 was their younger daughter Anne's 13th birthday. 156 00:08:01,135 --> 00:08:02,792 Among her gifts was a diary 157 00:08:02,827 --> 00:08:05,243 that she was soon filling with profiles of 158 00:08:05,277 --> 00:08:07,901 her classmates at the Jewish Lyceum 159 00:08:07,935 --> 00:08:11,421 the Germans now required her to attend... 160 00:08:11,456 --> 00:08:13,941 the girls she liked and those she didn't, 161 00:08:13,976 --> 00:08:15,978 and the boys she liked 162 00:08:16,012 --> 00:08:17,566 and those who seemed to like her. 163 00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:19,740 ♪ 164 00:08:19,775 --> 00:08:22,260 For the Franks and other Jewish families... 165 00:08:22,294 --> 00:08:24,849 including their neighbors, the Geiringers, 166 00:08:24,883 --> 00:08:26,816 refugees from Austria... 167 00:08:26,851 --> 00:08:31,200 life under the Nazis was now anything but normal. 168 00:08:31,234 --> 00:08:33,305 ♪ 169 00:08:33,340 --> 00:08:35,963 Woman: The first few weeks, nothing had much changed. 170 00:08:35,998 --> 00:08:37,655 And, so, we thought, "Oh, well, 171 00:08:37,689 --> 00:08:41,072 perhaps they don't want to do anything in Holland." 172 00:08:41,106 --> 00:08:46,664 The Dutch people were very typical, you know, 173 00:08:46,698 --> 00:08:49,908 they said, "You are, you belong to us. 174 00:08:49,943 --> 00:08:51,358 "We are going to protect you. 175 00:08:51,392 --> 00:08:53,567 You don't have to worry about anything." 176 00:08:53,602 --> 00:08:56,432 But they didn't really count on the measures 177 00:08:56,466 --> 00:08:59,884 which the Germans were going to take gradually. 178 00:08:59,918 --> 00:09:03,439 And the first year, it became a nuisance. 179 00:09:03,473 --> 00:09:06,442 It interfered with our way of life, 180 00:09:06,476 --> 00:09:08,306 but it was not dangerous. 181 00:09:08,340 --> 00:09:12,517 We were not allowed on public transport, for instance. 182 00:09:12,552 --> 00:09:14,243 But we all had bicycles. 183 00:09:15,416 --> 00:09:19,041 But then you had to hand in your bicycle. 184 00:09:19,075 --> 00:09:22,803 And then we had to wear the yellow star, 185 00:09:22,838 --> 00:09:26,566 which means that people walk in the street 186 00:09:26,600 --> 00:09:29,258 and are recognizable as Jews. 187 00:09:29,292 --> 00:09:32,261 And that started to become really dangerous 188 00:09:32,295 --> 00:09:35,885 because people just disappeared. 189 00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:37,646 I didn't want to wear it. 190 00:09:37,680 --> 00:09:38,750 I was stubborn. I said, 191 00:09:38,785 --> 00:09:39,993 "Well, I know I'm a Jew, 192 00:09:40,027 --> 00:09:41,788 why do I have to wear a star?" 193 00:09:41,822 --> 00:09:44,963 But everybody had ID cards. 194 00:09:44,998 --> 00:09:47,000 And on Jewish people ID card, 195 00:09:47,034 --> 00:09:49,416 it did say you were a Jew, 196 00:09:49,450 --> 00:09:53,075 or sometimes there was even a "J" stamped on it. 197 00:09:53,109 --> 00:09:57,597 So, if you would have been stopped without wearing a star, 198 00:09:57,631 --> 00:09:59,184 and they asked for your papers, 199 00:09:59,219 --> 00:10:02,049 you would have been deported immediately. 200 00:10:02,084 --> 00:10:04,949 ♪ 201 00:10:04,983 --> 00:10:08,021 Girl as Anne Frank: July 5, 1942. 202 00:10:08,055 --> 00:10:09,056 ♪ 203 00:10:09,091 --> 00:10:10,920 A few days ago, as we were 204 00:10:10,955 --> 00:10:14,855 taking a stroll around our neighborhood square, 205 00:10:14,890 --> 00:10:18,031 Father began to talk about going into hiding. 206 00:10:18,065 --> 00:10:18,859 ♪ 207 00:10:18,894 --> 00:10:20,689 He sounded so serious 208 00:10:20,723 --> 00:10:23,519 that I felt scared. 209 00:10:23,553 --> 00:10:26,487 "Don't you worry. We'll take care of everything. 210 00:10:26,522 --> 00:10:30,491 Just enjoy your carefree life while you can." 211 00:10:30,526 --> 00:10:32,045 ♪ 212 00:10:32,079 --> 00:10:35,358 That was it. Oh, may these somber words 213 00:10:35,393 --> 00:10:38,499 not come true for as long as possible. 214 00:10:38,534 --> 00:10:45,230 ♪ 215 00:10:45,265 --> 00:10:48,164 Narrator: The Frank family was in constant danger, 216 00:10:48,199 --> 00:10:50,684 and so, they had been slowly moving their belongings 217 00:10:50,719 --> 00:10:55,551 to an annex in the warehouse at 263 Prinsengracht 218 00:10:55,585 --> 00:10:59,451 in which Otto Frank's business was located. 219 00:10:59,486 --> 00:11:03,732 A few trusted Gentile employees had agreed to help the Franks 220 00:11:03,766 --> 00:11:07,218 survive in hiding when the time came. 221 00:11:07,252 --> 00:11:09,323 "We'll leave of our own accord 222 00:11:09,358 --> 00:11:12,223 and not wait to be hauled away," Frank said. 223 00:11:12,257 --> 00:11:14,190 ♪ 224 00:11:14,225 --> 00:11:16,848 But then a registered letter arrived. 225 00:11:16,883 --> 00:11:20,127 Anne's older sister Margot... just 16... 226 00:11:20,162 --> 00:11:22,233 was to be included in the first group of 227 00:11:22,267 --> 00:11:24,787 Jewish refugees in Holland to be sent 228 00:11:24,822 --> 00:11:27,548 to work in a German labor camp. 229 00:11:27,583 --> 00:11:31,483 The Franks went into hiding the next morning. 230 00:11:31,518 --> 00:11:33,313 Since Jews were now forbidden to 231 00:11:33,347 --> 00:11:36,316 ride on streetcars or own bicycles, 232 00:11:36,350 --> 00:11:39,595 they were forced to carry their remaining household items 233 00:11:39,629 --> 00:11:40,665 through the streets. 234 00:11:40,700 --> 00:11:42,322 [Rain falling, thunder] 235 00:11:42,356 --> 00:11:43,817 Girl as Anne Frank: So, there we were, 236 00:11:43,841 --> 00:11:45,946 walking in the pouring rain, 237 00:11:45,981 --> 00:11:48,431 each of us with a satchel and a shopping bag 238 00:11:48,466 --> 00:11:53,471 filled to the brim with the most varied assortments of items. 239 00:11:53,505 --> 00:11:56,267 The people on their way to work at that early hour 240 00:11:56,301 --> 00:11:59,270 gave us sympathetic looks; 241 00:11:59,304 --> 00:12:01,341 you could tell by their faces they were sorry 242 00:12:01,375 --> 00:12:05,207 they couldn't offer us some kind of transport; 243 00:12:05,241 --> 00:12:09,280 the conspicuous yellow star spoke for itself. 244 00:12:09,314 --> 00:12:10,626 [Thunder] 245 00:12:10,660 --> 00:12:12,559 Narrator: The two floors that Anne would call 246 00:12:12,593 --> 00:12:15,838 their "Secret Annex" were accessible only by 247 00:12:15,873 --> 00:12:19,083 a single door blocked by a bookcase 248 00:12:19,117 --> 00:12:21,499 and cramped even before they were joined by 249 00:12:21,533 --> 00:12:24,674 4 more Jews in need of a hiding place. 250 00:12:24,709 --> 00:12:27,022 ♪ 251 00:12:27,056 --> 00:12:28,955 The same week the Franks disappeared, 252 00:12:28,989 --> 00:12:31,578 their friends the Geiringers did, too... 253 00:12:31,612 --> 00:12:33,131 and for the same reason. 254 00:12:33,166 --> 00:12:35,616 Eva Geiringer's older brother Heinz, 255 00:12:35,651 --> 00:12:38,102 like Margot Frank, had been called up 256 00:12:38,136 --> 00:12:41,450 for what the Nazis called "labor service." 257 00:12:41,484 --> 00:12:42,244 ♪ 258 00:12:42,278 --> 00:12:44,039 Geiringer: Heinz was 16, 259 00:12:44,073 --> 00:12:46,904 and my father called us together one evening, 260 00:12:46,938 --> 00:12:48,284 and he said, 261 00:12:48,319 --> 00:12:50,183 "We are not going to send Heinz. 262 00:12:50,217 --> 00:12:51,460 It's too dangerous." 263 00:12:51,494 --> 00:12:53,255 ♪ 264 00:12:53,289 --> 00:12:55,405 Narrator: Members of the Dutch Resistance had provided them 265 00:12:55,429 --> 00:12:58,398 with false papers and places to hide. 266 00:12:58,432 --> 00:13:01,366 But the constant dread of raids by the Gestapo 267 00:13:01,401 --> 00:13:05,060 forced the Geiringers to temporarily split up. 268 00:13:05,094 --> 00:13:07,510 Eva was to hide with her mother, 269 00:13:07,545 --> 00:13:09,305 Heinz with their father. 270 00:13:09,340 --> 00:13:10,928 ♪ 271 00:13:10,962 --> 00:13:14,414 Geiringer: I started to cry. I didn't want to be separated 272 00:13:14,448 --> 00:13:18,556 'cause I was very much attached to my brother and father. 273 00:13:18,590 --> 00:13:23,319 And my father explained, "If we're in two different places, 274 00:13:23,354 --> 00:13:28,980 "the chance that two of us will survive is bigger. 275 00:13:29,015 --> 00:13:33,398 So, survive." So, that was really, 276 00:13:33,433 --> 00:13:36,539 you know, the first time that I really realized 277 00:13:36,574 --> 00:13:38,956 it's a matter of life and death. 278 00:13:38,990 --> 00:13:40,129 ♪ 279 00:13:40,164 --> 00:13:41,303 And that's quite scary 280 00:13:41,337 --> 00:13:43,615 when you are 13 years old. 281 00:13:43,650 --> 00:13:46,860 I said, "What do you mean? Will we be killed?" 282 00:13:46,895 --> 00:13:48,931 [Soldiers marching] 283 00:13:48,966 --> 00:13:53,487 About once a week, in the night, there was a knock on the door 284 00:13:53,522 --> 00:13:59,010 and people had to open up and let them search their homes. 285 00:13:59,045 --> 00:14:02,151 A story had been going around that 286 00:14:02,186 --> 00:14:05,223 in another house, the beds were still warm. 287 00:14:05,258 --> 00:14:06,776 They felt the beds. 288 00:14:06,811 --> 00:14:08,882 So, they demolished the whole apartment 289 00:14:08,917 --> 00:14:10,470 till they found the people. 290 00:14:10,504 --> 00:14:14,577 And, of course, hosts were taken away as well. 291 00:14:14,612 --> 00:14:17,408 So, of course, when you hear stories like that, 292 00:14:17,442 --> 00:14:20,894 people said, "You know, we can't take this tension any longer. 293 00:14:20,929 --> 00:14:25,657 You have to move." So, we moved about 7 times, 294 00:14:25,692 --> 00:14:28,798 my mother and me, to different places. 295 00:14:28,833 --> 00:14:31,905 My mother, she used to be in Austria as a lamb, 296 00:14:31,940 --> 00:14:37,462 but suddenly, she became like a tiger, protecting her children. 297 00:14:37,497 --> 00:14:39,948 My father, when we went into hiding, he said, 298 00:14:39,982 --> 00:14:41,535 "Don't worry. It won't be long. 299 00:14:41,570 --> 00:14:45,298 By Christmas, the war will be finished," 300 00:14:45,332 --> 00:14:48,232 end of '42. But, of course, it wasn't. 301 00:14:51,821 --> 00:14:54,479 Girl as Anne Frank: It's the silence that makes me so nervous 302 00:14:54,514 --> 00:14:57,103 during the evenings and nights, 303 00:14:57,137 --> 00:14:59,519 and I'd give anything to have 304 00:14:59,553 --> 00:15:02,591 one of our helpers sleep here. 305 00:15:02,625 --> 00:15:06,767 I'm terrified our hiding place will be discovered 306 00:15:06,802 --> 00:15:08,631 and that we'll be shot. 307 00:15:09,805 --> 00:15:13,188 That, of course, is a fairly dismal prospect. 308 00:15:17,399 --> 00:15:21,437 ♪ 309 00:15:21,472 --> 00:15:26,235 Lipstadt: The "Chicago Tribune" in late June of '42 310 00:15:26,270 --> 00:15:30,515 reports the mass killing of Jews. 311 00:15:30,550 --> 00:15:32,586 ♪ 312 00:15:32,621 --> 00:15:35,451 Like many other newspapers, the "Tribune" 313 00:15:35,486 --> 00:15:40,801 puts it on page 6 or 7 in a tiny, little article. 314 00:15:40,836 --> 00:15:42,700 You either missed it, or if you saw it, 315 00:15:42,734 --> 00:15:45,427 you would say the editors don't think this is true. 316 00:15:45,461 --> 00:15:47,049 If they thought this was true, 317 00:15:47,084 --> 00:15:49,672 this would be on the front pages. 318 00:15:49,707 --> 00:15:53,124 Narrator: Some papers did put the story on the front page, 319 00:15:53,159 --> 00:15:55,540 including the "Pittsburgh Courier," 320 00:15:55,575 --> 00:15:58,992 an African American newspaper, which said, 321 00:15:59,027 --> 00:16:04,032 "the Nazis could teach even southern whites a few lessons." 322 00:16:08,864 --> 00:16:09,830 ♪ 323 00:16:09,865 --> 00:16:11,211 3 years after their 324 00:16:11,246 --> 00:16:12,937 aborted voyage to Cuba 325 00:16:12,972 --> 00:16:14,490 aboard the "St. Louis," 326 00:16:14,525 --> 00:16:16,803 Sol Messinger and his parents 327 00:16:16,837 --> 00:16:20,841 finally made it to America in June of 1942, 328 00:16:20,876 --> 00:16:23,810 aboard the "Serpa Pinto," the same ship 329 00:16:23,844 --> 00:16:28,056 that had brought Susie and Joe Hilsenrath 10 months earlier. 330 00:16:28,090 --> 00:16:29,747 ♪ 331 00:16:29,781 --> 00:16:33,130 Messinger: Our sponsor was a man in Buffalo 332 00:16:33,164 --> 00:16:35,028 who had a furniture store. 333 00:16:35,063 --> 00:16:37,548 And he was a relative of a relative 334 00:16:37,582 --> 00:16:40,033 whom we knew in Berlin. 335 00:16:40,068 --> 00:16:41,793 He was the one who sponsored us. 336 00:16:41,828 --> 00:16:44,210 It was great to be in the United States, 337 00:16:44,244 --> 00:16:47,868 not to be afraid of, you know, policemen. 338 00:16:47,903 --> 00:16:51,562 To be with relatives whom I never knew, 339 00:16:51,596 --> 00:16:54,220 but who obviously loved us. 340 00:16:54,254 --> 00:16:59,397 And you could feel or see how people 341 00:16:59,432 --> 00:17:02,538 were more or less relaxed, you know, 342 00:17:02,573 --> 00:17:04,092 they weren't worried about being 343 00:17:04,126 --> 00:17:06,197 picked up by the police and so on. 344 00:17:06,232 --> 00:17:09,994 It just was amazing. 345 00:17:10,029 --> 00:17:12,203 Narrator: As he settled into life in Buffalo, 346 00:17:12,238 --> 00:17:14,516 Sol worried about Leon Silber, 347 00:17:14,550 --> 00:17:17,001 a friend he had made aboard the "St. Louis" 348 00:17:17,036 --> 00:17:20,246 whose family had fled to the same village 349 00:17:20,280 --> 00:17:23,904 he had escaped to in the south of France. 350 00:17:23,939 --> 00:17:27,115 Messinger: 6 weeks after we had left, 351 00:17:27,149 --> 00:17:30,532 his parents must have heard that 352 00:17:30,566 --> 00:17:32,637 something was about to happen. 353 00:17:32,672 --> 00:17:36,020 They went to the teacher and they asked her 354 00:17:36,055 --> 00:17:40,128 to hide Leon and she did. 355 00:17:40,162 --> 00:17:42,268 And the next day, the police came 356 00:17:42,302 --> 00:17:45,029 and they took the parents away. 357 00:17:45,064 --> 00:17:48,688 Then the second day that he was hidden in the school, 358 00:17:48,722 --> 00:17:51,415 he decided he wanted to join his parents. 359 00:17:51,449 --> 00:17:54,038 He left the school and went to the police 360 00:17:54,073 --> 00:17:57,145 and said who he was, 361 00:17:57,179 --> 00:17:58,698 and he wanted to join his parents. 362 00:17:58,732 --> 00:18:03,703 And he did. He was killed in Auschwitz. 363 00:18:03,737 --> 00:18:06,292 [Sigh] 364 00:18:07,741 --> 00:18:11,020 He was one of one and a half million kids 365 00:18:11,055 --> 00:18:13,920 who were killed by the Germans. 366 00:18:13,954 --> 00:18:16,336 Including all my cousins. 367 00:18:26,484 --> 00:18:29,418 Narrator: On July 29, 1942... 368 00:18:29,453 --> 00:18:31,282 a little over 3 weeks after 369 00:18:31,317 --> 00:18:35,597 the Frank and Geiringer families went into hiding in Amsterdam... 370 00:18:35,631 --> 00:18:39,773 a well-connected German businessman named Eduard Schulte 371 00:18:39,808 --> 00:18:43,743 boarded a train for Zurich in neutral Switzerland. 372 00:18:43,777 --> 00:18:47,471 He had told his staff he would be away on business. 373 00:18:48,437 --> 00:18:51,854 But he had another, secret goal in mind. 374 00:18:52,890 --> 00:18:55,617 From the first, Schulte had seen the Nazis 375 00:18:55,651 --> 00:18:57,550 as "a band of criminals;" 376 00:18:57,584 --> 00:19:00,863 their war would end only in disaster for Germany, 377 00:19:00,898 --> 00:19:04,384 and he had already made this dangerous trip several times 378 00:19:04,419 --> 00:19:06,938 to speak with Polish and Swiss agents 379 00:19:06,973 --> 00:19:09,941 about likely German troop movements. 380 00:19:11,943 --> 00:19:15,706 Now he had learned from an employee with Nazi contacts 381 00:19:15,740 --> 00:19:18,916 that 12 days earlier, Heinrich Himmler had made 382 00:19:18,950 --> 00:19:21,677 a formal visit to the concentration camp 383 00:19:21,712 --> 00:19:27,200 in occupied Poland now called Auschwitz-Birkenau. 384 00:19:27,235 --> 00:19:29,409 Himmler had spent two days there, 385 00:19:29,444 --> 00:19:30,962 had watched the first trainload 386 00:19:30,997 --> 00:19:34,069 of 2,000 Jews from Holland arrive, 387 00:19:34,103 --> 00:19:37,762 observed the selection of those deemed fit for labor, 388 00:19:37,797 --> 00:19:42,042 and looked on impassively as 447 people 389 00:19:42,077 --> 00:19:45,287 deemed unfit were immediately put to death, 390 00:19:45,322 --> 00:19:49,671 using a new method of which Rudolf Hoess, the commandant, 391 00:19:49,705 --> 00:19:51,880 was especially proud. 392 00:19:51,914 --> 00:19:55,055 Instead of relying on carbon monoxide produced by 393 00:19:55,090 --> 00:19:58,783 internal combustion engines that frequently broke down, 394 00:19:58,818 --> 00:20:01,407 the SS at Auschwitz had begun using 395 00:20:01,441 --> 00:20:04,548 commercially available pellets of Zyklon, 396 00:20:04,582 --> 00:20:08,552 a powerful vaporizing cyanide-based pesticide 397 00:20:08,586 --> 00:20:10,899 that reduced the cost of killing 398 00:20:10,933 --> 00:20:15,179 to roughly one U.S. penny per victim. 399 00:20:15,214 --> 00:20:18,562 The same method would be adopted at Majdanek, 400 00:20:18,596 --> 00:20:23,256 one of the 6 killing centers in occupied Poland. 401 00:20:23,291 --> 00:20:28,848 Lipstadt: Gas chambers serve one purpose and one purpose only: 402 00:20:28,882 --> 00:20:31,402 to murder as many people as you can 403 00:20:31,437 --> 00:20:33,646 as efficiently as you can. 404 00:20:33,680 --> 00:20:34,819 ♪ 405 00:20:34,854 --> 00:20:36,442 Narrator: Himmler was so impressed 406 00:20:36,476 --> 00:20:38,271 he promoted Hoess to Lieutenant Colonel 407 00:20:38,306 --> 00:20:42,068 and urged him to enlarge the camp as fast as he could. 408 00:20:42,102 --> 00:20:45,554 The "program of extermination will continue," he said, 409 00:20:45,589 --> 00:20:48,730 "and will be accelerated every month." 410 00:20:48,764 --> 00:20:50,387 [Train's horn blows] 411 00:20:50,421 --> 00:20:53,769 Schulte was determined to get the explosive information 412 00:20:53,804 --> 00:20:57,290 to Jewish leaders in Britain and the United States, 413 00:20:57,325 --> 00:20:59,430 hoping that they could persuade their governments 414 00:20:59,465 --> 00:21:02,640 to do something before it was too late. 415 00:21:03,710 --> 00:21:05,747 In Zurich, Schulte told what he knew 416 00:21:05,781 --> 00:21:08,267 to a Jewish banker friend who eventually 417 00:21:08,301 --> 00:21:11,753 passed his story on to a 30-year-old representative 418 00:21:11,787 --> 00:21:14,031 of the World Jewish Congress, 419 00:21:14,065 --> 00:21:17,897 a refugee named Gerhart Riegner. 420 00:21:17,931 --> 00:21:20,486 Woman: Riegner hears third-hand that the Nazis 421 00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:23,316 have a plan to gather the Jews together 422 00:21:23,351 --> 00:21:26,906 in the East and murder them before the end of the year. 423 00:21:26,940 --> 00:21:30,047 He obsesses over this. This keeps him up at night. 424 00:21:30,081 --> 00:21:32,843 And, finally, on August 8th, 1942, 425 00:21:32,877 --> 00:21:37,192 he decides that he is going to spread this to the world. 426 00:21:37,226 --> 00:21:40,678 He is going to get the Allies to do something about this. 427 00:21:40,713 --> 00:21:43,163 So, he goes to the U.S. Consulate in Geneva 428 00:21:43,198 --> 00:21:47,582 and explains what he's learned to the Vice Consul there. 429 00:21:49,031 --> 00:21:51,965 Narrator: Riegner was "a serious and balanced individual," 430 00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:54,899 the vice consul wrote in his memorandum. 431 00:21:54,934 --> 00:21:58,834 But his boss was dismissive and added a covering note 432 00:21:58,869 --> 00:22:01,112 before sending it on to Washington, 433 00:22:01,147 --> 00:22:03,736 warning that Riegner's story had 434 00:22:03,770 --> 00:22:06,670 all the "earmarks of a war rumor." 435 00:22:07,809 --> 00:22:11,226 That the Nazis persecuted the Jews was undeniable, 436 00:22:11,260 --> 00:22:13,366 but the notion that the Nazis were now 437 00:22:13,401 --> 00:22:16,990 preparing to kill them all was simply impossible for 438 00:22:17,025 --> 00:22:20,200 many in the State Department to believe. 439 00:22:20,235 --> 00:22:22,202 ♪ 440 00:22:22,237 --> 00:22:23,732 Erbelding: State Department officials decide that 441 00:22:23,756 --> 00:22:25,551 this is not good information, 442 00:22:25,585 --> 00:22:27,967 and this is crucial, they say, 443 00:22:28,001 --> 00:22:29,624 "Even if this were true, there's 444 00:22:29,658 --> 00:22:32,385 nothing that we could do about it." 445 00:22:32,420 --> 00:22:33,638 They believe that they are doing 446 00:22:33,662 --> 00:22:35,319 all they can to assist the Jews 447 00:22:35,354 --> 00:22:38,874 and that any sort of rally or petition or protest 448 00:22:38,909 --> 00:22:40,773 asking them to do more would be 449 00:22:40,807 --> 00:22:44,259 diverting resources from the war effort. 450 00:22:44,293 --> 00:22:45,674 Many of these people were also 451 00:22:45,709 --> 00:22:47,469 racist and antisemitic and nativist. 452 00:22:47,504 --> 00:22:52,267 And, so, you have to wonder whether some of their concern, 453 00:22:52,301 --> 00:22:54,994 some of their annoyances have to do with the fact 454 00:22:55,028 --> 00:22:57,065 that they're being asked to help Jews. 455 00:22:58,169 --> 00:23:00,689 Narrator: But Riegner had also told his story 456 00:23:00,724 --> 00:23:02,829 to a British consular official, 457 00:23:02,864 --> 00:23:05,936 who passed it on to a Jewish member of Parliament, 458 00:23:05,970 --> 00:23:08,248 who passed it on to Stephen Wise, 459 00:23:08,283 --> 00:23:11,528 the best-known rabbi in the United States. 460 00:23:11,562 --> 00:23:13,012 ♪ 461 00:23:13,046 --> 00:23:14,669 Wise took it to Under Secretary of State 462 00:23:14,703 --> 00:23:15,877 Sumner Welles, 463 00:23:15,911 --> 00:23:17,499 who asked him to say nothing 464 00:23:17,534 --> 00:23:18,742 until he could find out 465 00:23:18,776 --> 00:23:21,848 how much truth there was in it. 466 00:23:21,883 --> 00:23:23,436 Wise was nearing 70, 467 00:23:23,471 --> 00:23:26,888 exhausted from overwork and in declining health. 468 00:23:26,922 --> 00:23:28,717 He told a friend that these were 469 00:23:28,752 --> 00:23:31,099 the unhappiest days of his life. 470 00:23:31,133 --> 00:23:33,895 They have "left me without sleep," he wrote, 471 00:23:33,929 --> 00:23:38,002 and "I am almost demented over my people's grief." 472 00:23:39,279 --> 00:23:42,317 Over the next two months, reports from the Vatican, 473 00:23:42,351 --> 00:23:46,217 the Red Cross, and from other witnesses supplied by Riegner 474 00:23:46,252 --> 00:23:51,222 suggested that the horror he described was real. 475 00:23:51,257 --> 00:23:53,846 Welles summoned Wise back to Washington again 476 00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:56,296 and gravely told him that the evidence 477 00:23:56,331 --> 00:23:58,264 justified his "worst fears." 478 00:23:58,298 --> 00:24:00,128 ♪ 479 00:24:00,162 --> 00:24:02,613 Wise called the Associated Press. 480 00:24:02,648 --> 00:24:04,477 There could be no doubt now. 481 00:24:04,512 --> 00:24:06,375 Two million Jews were already dead, 482 00:24:06,410 --> 00:24:09,793 he told reporters, which would eventually turn out 483 00:24:09,827 --> 00:24:13,037 to have been a gross underestimate... 484 00:24:13,072 --> 00:24:15,281 4 million had already been killed... 485 00:24:15,315 --> 00:24:18,318 and the Nazis intended to go on killing Jews 486 00:24:18,353 --> 00:24:21,425 as long as there were Jews to kill. 487 00:24:21,460 --> 00:24:29,460 ♪ 488 00:24:30,330 --> 00:24:32,091 The story finally made the front page 489 00:24:32,125 --> 00:24:34,058 of the "New York Herald-Tribune," 490 00:24:34,093 --> 00:24:36,198 where it appeared with another story, 491 00:24:36,233 --> 00:24:39,685 credited to the Polish government-in-exile in London, 492 00:24:39,719 --> 00:24:42,342 which described Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto 493 00:24:42,377 --> 00:24:45,691 being loaded into freight cars and transported 494 00:24:45,725 --> 00:24:49,971 to Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, 495 00:24:50,005 --> 00:24:53,457 where, it said, they were being "mass-murdered." 496 00:24:53,492 --> 00:24:55,183 ♪ 497 00:24:55,217 --> 00:24:56,850 Erbelding: Riegner's message, when it finally reaches 498 00:24:56,874 --> 00:24:58,876 the American people in November, 1942, 499 00:24:58,911 --> 00:25:01,948 is the first information that the American people 500 00:25:01,983 --> 00:25:06,228 really have verified that the Nazis have a plan 501 00:25:06,263 --> 00:25:08,265 to murder all of the Jews of Europe. 502 00:25:08,299 --> 00:25:10,336 ♪ 503 00:25:10,370 --> 00:25:14,789 Narrator: The news was widely circulated by the Associated Press, 504 00:25:14,823 --> 00:25:16,998 though its impact was lessened by reports 505 00:25:17,032 --> 00:25:19,138 about the fighting in North Africa, 506 00:25:19,172 --> 00:25:22,866 where American troops had just landed, 507 00:25:22,900 --> 00:25:25,144 and from Stalingrad, where the Soviets 508 00:25:25,178 --> 00:25:28,147 had finally broken the German siege. 509 00:25:28,181 --> 00:25:30,667 ♪ 510 00:25:30,701 --> 00:25:33,877 CBS Radio correspondent Edward R. Murrow, 511 00:25:33,911 --> 00:25:37,052 perhaps the country's most respected reporter, 512 00:25:37,087 --> 00:25:40,884 was unsparing in his broadcast. 513 00:25:40,918 --> 00:25:43,058 "What is happening is this," he said. 514 00:25:43,093 --> 00:25:46,545 "Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, 515 00:25:46,579 --> 00:25:49,617 "are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency 516 00:25:49,651 --> 00:25:51,204 and murdered." 517 00:25:51,239 --> 00:25:53,310 ♪ 518 00:25:53,344 --> 00:25:59,488 Jewish organizations worldwide declared December 2, 1942 519 00:25:59,523 --> 00:26:01,007 a "Day of Mourning." 520 00:26:03,354 --> 00:26:07,807 On December 8th, Stephen Wise and 3 other Jewish leaders 521 00:26:07,842 --> 00:26:09,257 met with the president. 522 00:26:09,291 --> 00:26:11,915 "Unless action is taken immediately, 523 00:26:11,949 --> 00:26:16,022 the Jews of Europe are doomed," they told him. 524 00:26:16,057 --> 00:26:18,853 Roosevelt said he was aware of the Nazi "horrors" 525 00:26:18,887 --> 00:26:21,131 but had no remedy at hand. 526 00:26:21,165 --> 00:26:23,754 "We are dealing with an insane man," he said. 527 00:26:23,789 --> 00:26:27,620 "Hitler and the group that surrounds him are psychopathic. 528 00:26:27,655 --> 00:26:31,935 That is why we cannot act toward them by normal means." 529 00:26:31,969 --> 00:26:35,455 Roosevelt: The first is freedom of speech... 530 00:26:35,490 --> 00:26:38,286 Narrator: Even before the United States entered the war, 531 00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:42,221 Roosevelt had made one of his over-arching goals 532 00:26:42,255 --> 00:26:44,085 the "freedom of every person 533 00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:47,433 "to worship God in his own way, 534 00:26:47,467 --> 00:26:49,228 everywhere in the world." 535 00:26:49,262 --> 00:26:50,643 Roosevelt: in the world. 536 00:26:50,678 --> 00:26:51,955 Narrator: And he had repeatedly 537 00:26:51,989 --> 00:26:53,542 denounced Nazi crimes 538 00:26:53,577 --> 00:26:55,510 and promised that those who committed them 539 00:26:55,544 --> 00:26:59,031 would be punished once victory was won. 540 00:26:59,065 --> 00:27:01,654 But he had always been careful to maintain 541 00:27:01,689 --> 00:27:05,451 that Hitler's victims included all sorts of people, 542 00:27:05,485 --> 00:27:08,178 not specifically Jews. 543 00:27:09,835 --> 00:27:13,770 Erbelding: The War Department does not want American soldiers 544 00:27:13,804 --> 00:27:16,738 to even know very much about the persecution of Jews 545 00:27:16,773 --> 00:27:20,535 because they feel like the soldiers won't fight hard 546 00:27:20,569 --> 00:27:22,848 if they think that they are secretly being sent 547 00:27:22,882 --> 00:27:24,712 to save the Jews. 548 00:27:26,368 --> 00:27:29,751 And Jewish organizations are obviously very sensitive to this. 549 00:27:31,304 --> 00:27:34,169 They don't want to have Americans perceive this 550 00:27:34,204 --> 00:27:36,447 as a war for the Jews. 551 00:27:36,482 --> 00:27:37,966 [Explosion] 552 00:27:39,761 --> 00:27:43,696 Narrator: Still, 9 days after Roosevelt met with Rabbi Wise, 553 00:27:43,731 --> 00:27:47,079 the United States joined in an Allied declaration 554 00:27:47,113 --> 00:27:52,360 issued simultaneously in Washington, London, and Moscow. 555 00:27:52,394 --> 00:27:55,777 The statement condemned "in the strongest possible terms 556 00:27:55,812 --> 00:28:00,817 this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination," 557 00:28:00,851 --> 00:28:04,924 and reaffirmed the Allies' "solemn resolution to ensure 558 00:28:04,959 --> 00:28:07,616 "that those responsible for these crimes 559 00:28:07,651 --> 00:28:10,481 "shall not escape retribution, 560 00:28:10,516 --> 00:28:16,315 and to press on with necessary practical measures to this end." 561 00:28:17,626 --> 00:28:21,907 But no specific practical measures were recommended 562 00:28:21,941 --> 00:28:24,979 other than victory on the battlefield. 563 00:28:26,635 --> 00:28:28,707 Man on newsreel: Through town after Tunisian town, 564 00:28:28,741 --> 00:28:31,502 the 8th army triumphantly marches, pushing the retreating... 565 00:28:31,537 --> 00:28:33,677 Man: What does that declaration say? 566 00:28:33,712 --> 00:28:36,542 It says, "We're going to punish the perpetrators. 567 00:28:36,576 --> 00:28:39,890 Full punishment of the perpetrators." 568 00:28:39,925 --> 00:28:44,481 We do rally, as a nation, to defeat fascism. 569 00:28:45,793 --> 00:28:47,173 We just don't rally, as a nation, 570 00:28:47,208 --> 00:28:49,486 to rescue the victims of fascism. 571 00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:51,015 Man on newsreel: And now Allied commanders look 572 00:28:51,039 --> 00:28:52,800 eagerly across the Mediterranean 573 00:28:52,834 --> 00:28:55,147 to the shores of Hitler's fortress Europe. 574 00:28:55,181 --> 00:28:56,873 ♪ 575 00:28:56,907 --> 00:28:59,599 Man: Three-quarters of the victims of the Holocaust are dead 576 00:28:59,634 --> 00:29:03,845 before any American soldier is in continental Europe. 577 00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:06,399 90% of the victims of the Holocaust 578 00:29:06,434 --> 00:29:09,713 die in the northeast quadrant of the European continent: 579 00:29:09,748 --> 00:29:13,234 Poland, Lithuania, and today, Belarus, Ukraine, 580 00:29:13,268 --> 00:29:15,132 but then the Soviet Union. 581 00:29:15,167 --> 00:29:17,031 They are all out of reach of 582 00:29:17,065 --> 00:29:20,241 American aircraft in Great Britain. 583 00:29:20,275 --> 00:29:22,070 There is no way American aircraft 584 00:29:22,105 --> 00:29:24,693 could have flown to any of those death camps 585 00:29:24,728 --> 00:29:26,488 and impeded the killing process 586 00:29:26,523 --> 00:29:28,732 while it was at its most intense 587 00:29:28,767 --> 00:29:31,666 in 1942 and in January of 1943. 588 00:29:31,700 --> 00:29:33,288 ♪ 589 00:29:33,323 --> 00:29:35,118 I think the only thing they could have done 590 00:29:35,152 --> 00:29:38,086 was to publicize what was happening more 591 00:29:38,121 --> 00:29:41,641 and to organize behind the scenes resistance. 592 00:29:41,676 --> 00:29:45,024 But they were always inhibited about this because remember, 593 00:29:45,059 --> 00:29:48,890 Nazi propaganda was that Roosevelt and Churchill 594 00:29:48,925 --> 00:29:51,099 were the tools of the Jews. 595 00:29:51,134 --> 00:29:53,826 They were fighting the war for the Jews. 596 00:29:53,861 --> 00:29:57,416 And the Nazis used this propaganda to great effect. 597 00:29:57,450 --> 00:30:00,350 And anything the Allies did that seemed to be 598 00:30:00,384 --> 00:30:04,147 explicitly defending Jews ran the risk of 599 00:30:04,181 --> 00:30:06,183 playing into the hands of that propaganda. 600 00:30:06,218 --> 00:30:09,014 ♪ 601 00:30:09,048 --> 00:30:11,292 Narrator: Despite the front-page coverage, 602 00:30:11,326 --> 00:30:14,053 despite the Allies' declaration, 603 00:30:14,088 --> 00:30:18,230 a Gallup poll taken early in January, 1943 604 00:30:18,264 --> 00:30:21,302 showed that fewer than half of its respondents 605 00:30:21,336 --> 00:30:24,167 could bring themselves to believe that the Nazis 606 00:30:24,201 --> 00:30:26,617 could possibly have killed as many as 607 00:30:26,652 --> 00:30:31,381 two million Jews, let alone 4 million. 608 00:30:31,415 --> 00:30:35,350 ♪ 609 00:30:35,385 --> 00:30:40,700 Woman: Druja, Poland, Tuesday, 4 A.M., June 16, 1942. 610 00:30:40,735 --> 00:30:42,461 ♪ 611 00:30:42,495 --> 00:30:46,327 My dear ones! I am writing this letter before my death, 612 00:30:46,361 --> 00:30:50,124 but I don't know the exact day that I and all my relatives 613 00:30:50,158 --> 00:30:52,920 will be killed, just because we are Jews. 614 00:30:52,954 --> 00:30:55,267 ♪ 615 00:30:55,301 --> 00:30:57,510 We are all hiding in one dugout. 616 00:30:57,545 --> 00:30:59,719 My hand trembles and it's hard for me 617 00:30:59,754 --> 00:31:00,720 to finish writing. 618 00:31:00,755 --> 00:31:02,377 ♪ 619 00:31:02,412 --> 00:31:07,866 Farewell. In the name of everybody: 620 00:31:07,900 --> 00:31:11,352 Father, Mother, Sima, Sonia, 621 00:31:11,386 --> 00:31:14,596 Zusia, Rasia, Yehezkel. 622 00:31:14,631 --> 00:31:17,461 And in the name of Zeldaleh the toddler, 623 00:31:17,496 --> 00:31:20,223 who doesn't understand anything yet. 624 00:31:21,741 --> 00:31:22,984 Fanya Barbakow. 625 00:31:27,506 --> 00:31:29,380 Man on newsreel: The Volga, where the great counteroffensive 626 00:31:29,404 --> 00:31:32,891 by the Soviet army is commanded by General Zhukov. 627 00:31:32,925 --> 00:31:35,963 He directs the strategy of Russian victories. 628 00:31:39,587 --> 00:31:42,245 On the Stalingrad front, we see the kind of fighting tactics 629 00:31:42,279 --> 00:31:44,005 that first stopped the Germans 630 00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:45,869 and now is hurling them back, 631 00:31:45,904 --> 00:31:47,767 trapping huge numbers of them. 632 00:31:49,355 --> 00:31:52,117 Narrator: In early 1943, the tide of battle 633 00:31:52,151 --> 00:31:54,429 turned against the Nazis. 634 00:31:55,361 --> 00:31:57,260 At Stalingrad, the Soviets, 635 00:31:57,294 --> 00:32:00,125 armed and supplied with American trucks 636 00:32:00,159 --> 00:32:03,197 and tanks and aircraft, 637 00:32:03,231 --> 00:32:06,407 had destroyed the entire German 6th Army. 638 00:32:07,718 --> 00:32:10,135 In North Africa, British forces had captured 639 00:32:10,169 --> 00:32:14,346 250,000 German and Italian prisoners... 640 00:32:14,380 --> 00:32:17,728 and saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews 641 00:32:17,763 --> 00:32:20,524 who had lived or sought sanctuary there. 642 00:32:20,559 --> 00:32:23,355 ♪ 643 00:32:23,389 --> 00:32:27,428 Meanwhile, the pace of the Nazi slaughter of Jews slowed, 644 00:32:27,462 --> 00:32:32,398 largely because so few survived to be killed. 645 00:32:32,433 --> 00:32:35,229 Those who did survive were needed for slave labor 646 00:32:35,263 --> 00:32:38,577 or lived mostly in Romania and Hungary, 647 00:32:38,611 --> 00:32:40,613 countries that were allied with 648 00:32:40,648 --> 00:32:43,030 but not controlled by the Nazis. 649 00:32:43,064 --> 00:32:44,859 ♪ 650 00:32:44,893 --> 00:32:51,417 In America, agitation for action against the killing accelerated. 651 00:32:51,452 --> 00:32:53,557 Rabbi Wise and the heads of several other 652 00:32:53,592 --> 00:32:56,733 well-known Jewish organizations continued 653 00:32:56,767 --> 00:33:00,323 to offer advice to the Roosevelt administration, 654 00:33:00,357 --> 00:33:02,187 but that advice had been discussed 655 00:33:02,221 --> 00:33:05,707 and either rejected or ignored before. 656 00:33:05,742 --> 00:33:08,331 And they were soon faced with a rival group 657 00:33:08,365 --> 00:33:10,126 more militant than theirs. 658 00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:15,234 Its name kept changing but its philosophy remained the same. 659 00:33:15,269 --> 00:33:17,409 Its founder was Peter Bergson, 660 00:33:17,443 --> 00:33:19,928 a recent arrival from Palestine 661 00:33:19,963 --> 00:33:21,965 and a member of the Irgun, 662 00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:24,071 a Zionist paramilitary group, 663 00:33:24,105 --> 00:33:28,385 who would dismiss Rabbi Wise and most of his Jewish allies 664 00:33:28,420 --> 00:33:31,733 as timorous "Americans of Hebrew descent," 665 00:33:31,768 --> 00:33:35,806 not authentic members of "the Hebrew Nation." 666 00:33:35,841 --> 00:33:37,084 ♪ 667 00:33:37,118 --> 00:33:39,293 Rescue now became Bergson's cause. 668 00:33:39,327 --> 00:33:41,916 With help from the screenwriter Ben Hecht, 669 00:33:41,950 --> 00:33:45,575 he produced an avalanche of newspaper advertisements 670 00:33:45,609 --> 00:33:48,233 charging the administration with ignoring 671 00:33:48,267 --> 00:33:51,098 the plight of Europe's Jews. 672 00:33:51,132 --> 00:33:53,376 [Men chanting Mourner's Kaddish] 673 00:34:01,315 --> 00:34:06,078 Narrator: On March 9, 1943, he filled Madison Square Garden twice 674 00:34:06,113 --> 00:34:10,669 with an elaborate pageant called "We Will Never Die!" 675 00:34:10,703 --> 00:34:13,534 Told largely from the viewpoint of the dead, 676 00:34:13,568 --> 00:34:18,401 it featured 200 rabbis and cantors and an all-star cast 677 00:34:18,435 --> 00:34:21,093 that included Edward G. Robinson, 678 00:34:21,128 --> 00:34:23,820 John Garfield, and Paul Muni. 679 00:34:25,304 --> 00:34:30,275 And this is not a Jewish problem. 680 00:34:30,309 --> 00:34:35,314 It is a problem that belongs to humanity, 681 00:34:35,349 --> 00:34:40,561 and it is a challenge to the soul of man. 682 00:34:40,595 --> 00:34:43,426 Narrator: The show would go on to Boston, Philadelphia, 683 00:34:43,460 --> 00:34:47,568 Washington, Chicago, and the Hollywood Bowl. 684 00:34:47,602 --> 00:34:49,708 Its composer, Kurt Weill, 685 00:34:49,742 --> 00:34:52,228 himself a refugee from the Nazis, 686 00:34:52,262 --> 00:34:54,816 was pleased by the big crowds it drew 687 00:34:54,851 --> 00:34:58,096 but felt the pageant didn't achieve much. 688 00:34:58,130 --> 00:35:00,891 "All we have done is make a lot of Jews cry," 689 00:35:00,926 --> 00:35:04,723 he said, "which is not a unique accomplishment." 690 00:35:05,655 --> 00:35:07,588 But it did impress the First Lady 691 00:35:07,622 --> 00:35:09,348 and scores of congressmen. 692 00:35:09,383 --> 00:35:11,626 [Applause] 693 00:35:17,287 --> 00:35:18,806 While the show was still touring, 694 00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,120 word came that some of the 70,000 Jews 695 00:35:22,154 --> 00:35:24,122 still alive in the Warsaw Ghetto 696 00:35:24,156 --> 00:35:26,262 had risen up against the Nazis 697 00:35:26,296 --> 00:35:29,644 rather than be deported to Treblinka. 698 00:35:29,679 --> 00:35:31,163 ♪ 699 00:35:31,198 --> 00:35:36,548 They had already buried artwork, diaries, poetry, 700 00:35:36,582 --> 00:35:40,897 and final notes in steel milk cans in the ground. 701 00:35:40,931 --> 00:35:46,592 ♪ 702 00:35:46,627 --> 00:35:48,870 One teenager wrote that he hoped to 703 00:35:48,905 --> 00:35:54,255 "alert the world to what happened in the 20th century. 704 00:35:54,290 --> 00:35:56,878 May history attest for us." 705 00:35:56,913 --> 00:36:01,642 ♪ 706 00:36:01,676 --> 00:36:05,646 The uprising was the largest Jewish rebellion of the war. 707 00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,788 It would take the Germans more than a month to crush it, 708 00:36:09,822 --> 00:36:14,758 level the ghetto, and send the survivors to their deaths. 709 00:36:14,793 --> 00:36:20,557 ♪ 710 00:36:20,592 --> 00:36:24,389 Woman: Freda Kirchwey, "The Nation" Magazine. 711 00:36:24,423 --> 00:36:27,426 In this country, you and I and the President 712 00:36:27,461 --> 00:36:29,980 and the Congress and the State Department 713 00:36:30,015 --> 00:36:34,295 are accessories to the crime and share Hitler's guilt. 714 00:36:34,330 --> 00:36:35,952 ♪ 715 00:36:35,986 --> 00:36:38,817 If we had behaved like humane and generous people 716 00:36:38,851 --> 00:36:42,752 instead of complacent, cowardly ones, 717 00:36:42,786 --> 00:36:45,617 the Jews lying today in the earth of Poland 718 00:36:45,651 --> 00:36:48,275 and Hitler's other crowded graveyards 719 00:36:48,309 --> 00:36:51,761 would be alive and safe. 720 00:36:51,795 --> 00:36:56,110 And other millions yet to die would have found sanctuary. 721 00:36:56,144 --> 00:36:58,837 We had it in our power to rescue this doomed people 722 00:36:58,871 --> 00:37:00,908 and we did not lift a hand to do it... 723 00:37:00,942 --> 00:37:02,461 ♪ 724 00:37:02,496 --> 00:37:04,291 Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that 725 00:37:04,325 --> 00:37:06,983 we lifted just one cautious hand, 726 00:37:07,017 --> 00:37:11,125 encased in a tight-fitting glove of quotas and visas 727 00:37:11,159 --> 00:37:16,061 and affidavits and a thick layer of prejudice. 728 00:37:16,095 --> 00:37:18,443 ♪ 729 00:37:18,477 --> 00:37:20,721 [Telegraph key tapping] 730 00:37:22,895 --> 00:37:25,829 Narrator: Gerhart Riegner... whose report from Switzerland 731 00:37:25,864 --> 00:37:27,900 had alerted America to the ongoing 732 00:37:27,935 --> 00:37:31,007 Nazi policy of extermination... 733 00:37:31,041 --> 00:37:34,459 sent Washington another desperate message. 734 00:37:35,770 --> 00:37:38,739 Tens of thousands of Jews deported by the Nazis 735 00:37:38,773 --> 00:37:41,293 were now trapped in northern Romania 736 00:37:41,328 --> 00:37:43,502 without warm clothing. 737 00:37:43,537 --> 00:37:47,748 They had just endured another harsh winter. 738 00:37:47,782 --> 00:37:50,337 With help from the International Red Cross, 739 00:37:50,371 --> 00:37:53,374 Riegner thought he could keep them alive. 740 00:37:54,996 --> 00:37:57,551 He also believed he could help Jewish children 741 00:37:57,585 --> 00:38:00,347 still hiding in France escape across 742 00:38:00,381 --> 00:38:03,142 the Swiss and Spanish borders. 743 00:38:04,627 --> 00:38:06,260 Erbelding: Riegner had many connections with 744 00:38:06,284 --> 00:38:09,321 underground organizations and partisan organizations 745 00:38:09,356 --> 00:38:10,943 in these different countries. 746 00:38:10,978 --> 00:38:12,842 And so, his idea was if he could get the money, 747 00:38:12,876 --> 00:38:15,293 he could funnel that money into France, 748 00:38:15,327 --> 00:38:19,055 into Romania, to people who could buy clothing and food, 749 00:38:19,089 --> 00:38:21,402 or who could buy fake documents, 750 00:38:21,437 --> 00:38:23,680 or pay off border guards to allow 751 00:38:23,715 --> 00:38:26,096 children to escape over the border. 752 00:38:26,131 --> 00:38:29,652 Narrator: Riegner's organization, the World Jewish Congress, 753 00:38:29,686 --> 00:38:31,170 could supply the money, 754 00:38:31,205 --> 00:38:33,345 but Riegner would need a special license 755 00:38:33,380 --> 00:38:36,797 from the Treasury Department, which routinely prohibited 756 00:38:36,831 --> 00:38:39,558 all "financial or commercial arrangements 757 00:38:39,593 --> 00:38:41,940 within enemy territory." 758 00:38:42,872 --> 00:38:46,772 On June 23, 1943, Riegner's request 759 00:38:46,807 --> 00:38:50,362 reached the desk of 34-year-old John Pehle, 760 00:38:50,397 --> 00:38:55,229 who ran the Foreign Funds Control department at Treasury. 761 00:38:55,263 --> 00:38:58,025 Pehle: The State Department was quite negative. 762 00:38:58,059 --> 00:39:01,062 It worried about the possibility of funds 763 00:39:01,097 --> 00:39:04,031 falling in the hands of the Germans. 764 00:39:04,065 --> 00:39:06,551 However, we went back and decided that 765 00:39:06,585 --> 00:39:09,416 we could put safeguards in the procedures, 766 00:39:09,450 --> 00:39:13,281 so that no foreign exchange would come to the Germans. 767 00:39:14,490 --> 00:39:17,251 Narrator: Pehle granted the license and sent it along 768 00:39:17,285 --> 00:39:20,530 to the State Department for transmission to Switzerland, 769 00:39:20,565 --> 00:39:23,602 assuming it would reach Riegner quickly. 770 00:39:23,637 --> 00:39:26,674 But the staff of Assistant Secretary of State 771 00:39:26,709 --> 00:39:29,781 Breckinridge Long, who had been adamantly opposed 772 00:39:29,815 --> 00:39:32,818 to helping Jewish refugees from the beginning, 773 00:39:32,853 --> 00:39:35,442 quietly shelved it. 774 00:39:35,476 --> 00:39:36,788 ♪ 775 00:39:36,822 --> 00:39:39,860 By the beginning of September 1943, 776 00:39:39,894 --> 00:39:42,863 when American and British troops landed in Italy 777 00:39:42,897 --> 00:39:46,073 and finally gained their first foothold in Europe, 778 00:39:46,107 --> 00:39:49,421 John Pehle insisted that the United States government 779 00:39:49,456 --> 00:39:52,459 should take an active role in trying to rescue 780 00:39:52,493 --> 00:39:55,772 Europe's surviving Jews... 781 00:39:55,807 --> 00:39:58,948 and he would do everything he could to help. 782 00:39:58,982 --> 00:40:00,570 ♪ 783 00:40:00,605 --> 00:40:03,815 Erbelding: John Pehle was the child of a German immigrant; 784 00:40:03,849 --> 00:40:06,990 his father had come when he was a teenager from Germany, 785 00:40:07,025 --> 00:40:10,718 and his mother was the child of Swedish immigrants. 786 00:40:10,753 --> 00:40:12,168 He grew up in Omaha. 787 00:40:12,202 --> 00:40:13,583 He went to college there 788 00:40:13,618 --> 00:40:15,447 and then ended up at Yale. 789 00:40:15,482 --> 00:40:19,589 But came from a family that did not always have a lot of money 790 00:40:19,624 --> 00:40:21,798 and was an immigrant family. 791 00:40:21,833 --> 00:40:22,765 ♪ 792 00:40:22,799 --> 00:40:23,845 And, so, I think that made him 793 00:40:23,869 --> 00:40:25,388 a little more sympathetic 794 00:40:25,423 --> 00:40:26,976 to the plight of people who 795 00:40:27,010 --> 00:40:29,392 did not come from wealth or privilege. 796 00:40:29,427 --> 00:40:32,740 ♪ 797 00:40:32,775 --> 00:40:34,742 Pehle also thinks that the United States 798 00:40:34,777 --> 00:40:37,193 is a force of good for the world. 799 00:40:37,227 --> 00:40:39,437 And a force of good for mankind. 800 00:40:39,471 --> 00:40:40,472 ♪ 801 00:40:40,507 --> 00:40:41,749 And that comes through 802 00:40:41,784 --> 00:40:43,233 a lot of his decisions. 803 00:40:43,268 --> 00:40:45,788 ♪ 804 00:40:45,822 --> 00:40:48,342 The United States cannot be isolationist, 805 00:40:48,376 --> 00:40:50,102 that we are part of a global community 806 00:40:50,137 --> 00:40:52,657 and that we need to treat everyone 807 00:40:52,691 --> 00:40:55,660 as a fellow citizen of the world. 808 00:40:59,836 --> 00:41:02,839 Narrator: On July 28, 1943, 809 00:41:02,874 --> 00:41:05,532 the ambassador of the Polish government-in-exile 810 00:41:05,566 --> 00:41:07,534 had brought a man named Jan Karski 811 00:41:07,568 --> 00:41:11,607 to the White House for a meeting with President Roosevelt. 812 00:41:11,641 --> 00:41:15,024 Karski was a Catholic courier for the Polish underground 813 00:41:15,058 --> 00:41:17,751 who had survived Gestapo torture, 814 00:41:17,785 --> 00:41:20,305 managed to smuggle himself in and out of 815 00:41:20,339 --> 00:41:23,170 the Warsaw Ghetto and a transit camp 816 00:41:23,204 --> 00:41:27,243 that exported Jews to the killing center at Belzec. 817 00:41:27,277 --> 00:41:29,901 Roosevelt questioned him closely about 818 00:41:29,935 --> 00:41:33,767 the situation in Nazi-occupied Poland. 819 00:41:58,308 --> 00:42:01,104 Narrator: Before he left, Karski asked FDR 820 00:42:01,139 --> 00:42:04,349 what message he had for the Polish people. 821 00:42:04,383 --> 00:42:08,318 "You will tell them that we will win this war," Roosevelt said. 822 00:42:08,353 --> 00:42:11,943 "You will tell them that the guilty will be punished. 823 00:42:11,977 --> 00:42:15,015 "Justice and freedom will prevail. 824 00:42:15,049 --> 00:42:17,500 "You will tell your nation that they have 825 00:42:17,535 --> 00:42:19,985 a friend in this house." 826 00:42:20,020 --> 00:42:20,952 ♪ 827 00:42:20,986 --> 00:42:23,092 FDR also tells Karski 828 00:42:23,126 --> 00:42:24,749 to meet with Felix Frankfurter, 829 00:42:24,783 --> 00:42:27,475 who's on the Supreme Court at the time. 830 00:42:27,510 --> 00:42:30,064 Frankfurter is Jewish. Karski tells Frankfurter 831 00:42:30,099 --> 00:42:34,275 what he's seen in Warsaw and other parts of Occupied Poland. 832 00:43:17,318 --> 00:43:20,908 ♪ 833 00:43:20,943 --> 00:43:25,464 Lipstadt: The Soviets bring a group of reporters to Babi Yar, 834 00:43:25,499 --> 00:43:29,365 where there's been one of the early mass killings of Jews. 835 00:43:31,367 --> 00:43:34,059 And they're walked through by two people 836 00:43:34,094 --> 00:43:38,029 who the Soviets say are survivors of this massacre. 837 00:43:38,961 --> 00:43:41,480 And they walk them through the fields 838 00:43:41,515 --> 00:43:43,621 where these killings have taken place, 839 00:43:43,655 --> 00:43:48,315 and there are bits of bones and broken eyeglasses and teeth 840 00:43:48,349 --> 00:43:52,630 and all sorts of things that... that indicate what has happened. 841 00:43:52,664 --> 00:43:55,115 ♪ 842 00:43:55,149 --> 00:43:57,151 There were American reporters who were present 843 00:43:57,186 --> 00:43:58,843 in this tour of Babi Yar, 844 00:43:58,877 --> 00:44:01,880 and one of them wrote a report 845 00:44:01,915 --> 00:44:05,332 that was so riddled with doubts... 846 00:44:05,366 --> 00:44:06,851 ♪ 847 00:44:06,885 --> 00:44:09,405 So riddled with questions. 848 00:44:09,439 --> 00:44:10,855 ♪ 849 00:44:10,889 --> 00:44:13,202 If I were a person reading that 850 00:44:13,236 --> 00:44:17,309 and I harbored the least bit of skepticism 851 00:44:17,344 --> 00:44:19,518 about the veracity of what was going on, 852 00:44:19,553 --> 00:44:24,385 I could dismiss this as war propaganda, as atrocity stories. 853 00:44:24,420 --> 00:44:28,838 And atrocity stories are a shorthand for fake news. 854 00:44:28,873 --> 00:44:34,361 I'm sitting at home in Chicago, Des Moines, St. Louis, New York, 855 00:44:34,395 --> 00:44:37,157 wherever it might be, and I'm reading those kind of reports, 856 00:44:37,191 --> 00:44:38,883 I'm saying, "This can't be true. 857 00:44:38,917 --> 00:44:40,091 This can't be true." 858 00:44:40,125 --> 00:44:44,820 ♪ 859 00:44:44,854 --> 00:44:47,339 Narrator: In early October 1943, 860 00:44:47,374 --> 00:44:51,723 Heinrich Himmler addressed a meeting of his SS commanders. 861 00:44:51,758 --> 00:44:57,349 By then, more than 4,500,000 Jews had been murdered. 862 00:44:58,799 --> 00:45:01,043 [Himmler speaking German] 863 00:45:39,529 --> 00:45:41,255 Narrator: Himmler was doing all he could 864 00:45:41,290 --> 00:45:44,362 to keep that chapter from being written. 865 00:45:44,396 --> 00:45:47,330 He ordered his men to dismantle and disguise 866 00:45:47,365 --> 00:45:50,678 the sites of the killing centers at Sobibor, 867 00:45:50,713 --> 00:45:52,646 Belzec, and Treblinka, 868 00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:55,511 where more than one and a half million human beings 869 00:45:55,545 --> 00:45:58,169 had been killed, and he insisted that 870 00:45:58,203 --> 00:46:00,896 prisoners be forced to dig up the dead, 871 00:46:00,930 --> 00:46:05,659 burn their corpses, and grind their bones to powder. 872 00:46:05,693 --> 00:46:09,525 Then he had the prisoners who'd done the ghastly work shot 873 00:46:09,559 --> 00:46:15,117 so that no one would ever tell what they had seen or done. 874 00:46:15,151 --> 00:46:16,774 Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, 875 00:46:16,808 --> 00:46:20,398 special "Exhumation Squads" were now retreating 876 00:46:20,432 --> 00:46:23,366 ahead of the advancing Red Army, 877 00:46:23,401 --> 00:46:25,127 seeing to it that the mass graves 878 00:46:25,161 --> 00:46:27,543 of the people whom the Einsatzgruppen 879 00:46:27,577 --> 00:46:29,717 and their accomplices had murdered 880 00:46:29,752 --> 00:46:33,100 back in 1941 and 1942 881 00:46:33,135 --> 00:46:35,206 were emptied as well. 882 00:46:36,897 --> 00:46:40,556 But in Nazi-occupied Poland, two killing centers 883 00:46:40,590 --> 00:46:43,835 continued their daily, deadly work... 884 00:46:43,870 --> 00:46:47,011 Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau... 885 00:46:47,045 --> 00:46:49,082 while one that had been closed, 886 00:46:49,116 --> 00:46:52,085 Chelmno, took it up again. 887 00:46:53,776 --> 00:46:57,884 Mendelsohn: Interviewing survivors who could give 888 00:46:57,918 --> 00:46:59,575 firsthand accounts, you know, 889 00:46:59,609 --> 00:47:02,474 people who were young adults when this happened. 890 00:47:02,509 --> 00:47:06,409 You know, you hear things that, 891 00:47:06,444 --> 00:47:08,170 you... you think you've heard it all, 892 00:47:08,204 --> 00:47:09,619 and you haven't heard it all. 893 00:47:09,654 --> 00:47:12,899 Trust me. There are... there's no bottom, 894 00:47:12,933 --> 00:47:14,555 as one of my survivors said, 895 00:47:14,590 --> 00:47:18,594 to the things that people will do to one another. 896 00:47:19,802 --> 00:47:25,256 The structures of what we think of as our civilized lives, 897 00:47:25,290 --> 00:47:28,673 they fall apart very easily. 898 00:47:28,707 --> 00:47:30,537 Surprisingly easily. 899 00:47:32,850 --> 00:47:34,886 ♪ 900 00:47:34,921 --> 00:47:39,166 Woman: I left behind me a few photos of my nearest ones 901 00:47:39,201 --> 00:47:41,755 in the hope that somebody would find them 902 00:47:41,789 --> 00:47:45,000 while digging and searching in the earth, 903 00:47:45,034 --> 00:47:49,418 and that this person would be so kind as to transmit them 904 00:47:49,452 --> 00:47:54,492 to one of my relatives or friends in America or Palestine, 905 00:47:54,526 --> 00:47:56,666 if there will still be any of them left. 906 00:47:56,701 --> 00:48:00,498 ♪ 907 00:48:00,532 --> 00:48:05,399 My name is Frieda Niselevitch, born in Vaiguva. 908 00:48:05,434 --> 00:48:10,577 ♪ 909 00:48:12,027 --> 00:48:19,655 ♪ 910 00:48:19,689 --> 00:48:22,313 Narrator: Two days after Himmler's secret speech 911 00:48:22,347 --> 00:48:24,522 and 3 days before Yom Kippur, 912 00:48:24,556 --> 00:48:27,042 the Jewish Day of Atonement, 913 00:48:27,076 --> 00:48:31,978 Peter Bergson arranged for 400 mostly orthodox rabbis 914 00:48:32,012 --> 00:48:34,152 to march to the Capitol. 915 00:48:34,187 --> 00:48:36,983 For fear of encouraging antisemitism, 916 00:48:37,017 --> 00:48:40,503 FDR's chief speech writer Sam Rosenman 917 00:48:40,538 --> 00:48:44,093 and most of the handful of Jewish members of Congress 918 00:48:44,128 --> 00:48:46,578 had opposed their coming. 919 00:48:46,613 --> 00:48:49,547 The rabbis sang the "Star-Spangled Banner," 920 00:48:49,581 --> 00:48:53,413 recited the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, 921 00:48:53,447 --> 00:48:56,934 and met with Vice President Henry A. Wallace. 922 00:48:56,968 --> 00:48:58,590 ♪ 923 00:48:58,625 --> 00:49:02,008 Man: We pray an appeal to the Lord, blessed be he, 924 00:49:02,042 --> 00:49:07,530 that our most gracious President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 925 00:49:07,565 --> 00:49:13,191 consider and recognize this momentous hour of history 926 00:49:13,226 --> 00:49:18,127 and the responsibility which the Divine Presence 927 00:49:18,162 --> 00:49:21,061 has laid upon him, that he may save 928 00:49:21,096 --> 00:49:23,443 the remnant of the people of the Book, 929 00:49:23,477 --> 00:49:25,583 the people of Israel. 930 00:49:25,617 --> 00:49:29,483 And we pray that the Lord may aid us 931 00:49:29,518 --> 00:49:32,521 to gain complete and speedy victory 932 00:49:32,555 --> 00:49:37,388 on all fronts against our enemies 933 00:49:37,422 --> 00:49:42,048 and that we may be blessed with everlasting peace. 934 00:49:42,082 --> 00:49:43,877 ♪ 935 00:49:43,911 --> 00:49:46,638 Narrator: The president did not see the rabbis. 936 00:49:46,673 --> 00:49:50,125 But they had an impact nonetheless. 937 00:49:50,159 --> 00:49:53,991 Several senators and congressmen introduced a resolution 938 00:49:54,025 --> 00:49:57,339 calling for a new commission tasked with somehow 939 00:49:57,373 --> 00:50:01,412 saving "the surviving Jewish people of Europe." 940 00:50:02,792 --> 00:50:06,037 Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long 941 00:50:06,072 --> 00:50:10,628 testified against it for 4 hours behind closed doors. 942 00:50:10,662 --> 00:50:13,458 There was no need for such a commission, he said, 943 00:50:13,493 --> 00:50:15,598 since the State Department had welcomed 944 00:50:15,633 --> 00:50:22,295 580,000 "refugees" to America since 1933. 945 00:50:22,329 --> 00:50:26,368 It was not true. The real refugee number 946 00:50:26,402 --> 00:50:28,266 was one-third of that. 947 00:50:29,785 --> 00:50:31,556 Lipstadt: Breckinridge Long, in his testimony, 948 00:50:31,580 --> 00:50:36,102 clearly misrepresents, some would say lies, 949 00:50:36,136 --> 00:50:37,655 but the best you can say is it's 950 00:50:37,689 --> 00:50:42,384 a total misrepresentation of America's record. 951 00:50:42,418 --> 00:50:45,145 He was crazed about preventing 952 00:50:45,180 --> 00:50:48,252 any refugees from coming here. 953 00:50:49,839 --> 00:50:52,325 Narrator: The resolution stalled in the House. 954 00:50:52,359 --> 00:50:55,017 And when Long's testimony became public 955 00:50:55,052 --> 00:50:56,639 a couple of weeks later, 956 00:50:56,674 --> 00:50:59,297 Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Celler 957 00:50:59,332 --> 00:51:01,920 called for his immediate resignation. 958 00:51:01,955 --> 00:51:03,922 ♪ 959 00:51:03,957 --> 00:51:06,235 Man as Celler: The tempest-tossed get little comfort 960 00:51:06,270 --> 00:51:08,479 from men like Breckinridge Long. 961 00:51:08,513 --> 00:51:11,068 If men of his temperament and philosophy 962 00:51:11,102 --> 00:51:14,554 continue in control of immigration administration, 963 00:51:14,588 --> 00:51:16,763 we may as well take down that plaque 964 00:51:16,797 --> 00:51:19,559 from the Statue of Liberty and black out 965 00:51:19,593 --> 00:51:22,148 the "lamp beside the golden door." 966 00:51:22,182 --> 00:51:25,116 ♪ 967 00:51:25,151 --> 00:51:26,980 Narrator: At the end of 1943, 968 00:51:27,014 --> 00:51:29,465 Gerhart Riegner was still waiting for 969 00:51:29,500 --> 00:51:32,158 the all-important license he needed 970 00:51:32,192 --> 00:51:34,815 to help Jews in Romania and France, 971 00:51:34,850 --> 00:51:39,130 which John Pehle had approved 5 months earlier. 972 00:51:39,165 --> 00:51:42,996 Breckinridge Long and his staff continued to stall, 973 00:51:43,030 --> 00:51:46,793 raising every possible potential barrier, 974 00:51:46,827 --> 00:51:48,588 even though the president himself 975 00:51:48,622 --> 00:51:51,349 was on record favoring it. 976 00:51:52,488 --> 00:51:54,594 Pehle: The people who were handling visa matters, 977 00:51:54,628 --> 00:51:56,458 and the policy of the State Department, 978 00:51:56,492 --> 00:51:59,530 seemed to be such that instead of 979 00:51:59,564 --> 00:52:02,567 facilitating the entry of refugees, 980 00:52:02,602 --> 00:52:05,398 obstructions were thrown in the way. 981 00:52:05,432 --> 00:52:07,020 It's as simple as that. 982 00:52:08,090 --> 00:52:10,920 Narrator: Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. 983 00:52:10,955 --> 00:52:14,165 Was the president's close friend and upstate neighbor, 984 00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:18,031 as well as the only Jewish member of his cabinet. 985 00:52:18,065 --> 00:52:21,310 All through the Hitler years, he had been careful 986 00:52:21,345 --> 00:52:22,725 never to seem to be seeking 987 00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:26,073 special treatment for his fellow Jews. 988 00:52:26,108 --> 00:52:28,179 But this was too much. 989 00:52:28,214 --> 00:52:32,735 He confronted Long and the Secretary of State Cordell Hull. 990 00:52:32,770 --> 00:52:36,222 The license was finally issued, 991 00:52:36,256 --> 00:52:37,671 but in the course of investigating 992 00:52:37,706 --> 00:52:39,880 the reason for the lengthy delay, 993 00:52:39,915 --> 00:52:43,401 Morgenthau's staff discovered that the State Department 994 00:52:43,436 --> 00:52:45,438 had deliberately suppressed Riegner's 995 00:52:45,472 --> 00:52:50,201 reports from Switzerland about the extermination of the Jews. 996 00:52:50,236 --> 00:52:51,892 ♪ 997 00:52:51,927 --> 00:52:53,491 Pehle: People in the State Department were saying, 998 00:52:53,515 --> 00:52:55,862 "Don't send any more messages over 999 00:52:55,896 --> 00:52:58,382 about what's happening to the Jews." 1000 00:52:59,314 --> 00:53:00,463 Erbelding: The State Department has been 1001 00:53:00,487 --> 00:53:01,937 deliberately obstructionist, 1002 00:53:01,971 --> 00:53:03,663 they have been delaying relief money 1003 00:53:03,697 --> 00:53:06,217 that could go to Jews in occupied Europe, 1004 00:53:06,252 --> 00:53:09,531 and lying about it, so that people would stop rallying, 1005 00:53:09,565 --> 00:53:11,395 they'd stop protesting, and they'd stop 1006 00:53:11,429 --> 00:53:13,259 asking the government to do more. 1007 00:53:13,293 --> 00:53:15,157 ♪ 1008 00:53:15,192 --> 00:53:18,988 Narrator: Morgenthau's outraged aides wrote an internal report 1009 00:53:19,023 --> 00:53:22,958 setting forth the evidence of the State Department's deceit. 1010 00:53:22,992 --> 00:53:24,649 ♪ 1011 00:53:24,684 --> 00:53:26,996 Man: It appears that certain responsible officials 1012 00:53:27,031 --> 00:53:29,551 of this government were so fearful that 1013 00:53:29,585 --> 00:53:33,175 this government might act to save the Jews of Europe 1014 00:53:33,210 --> 00:53:35,764 if the gruesome facts relating to Hitler's plans 1015 00:53:35,798 --> 00:53:38,456 to exterminate them became known, 1016 00:53:38,491 --> 00:53:41,908 that they attempted to suppress the facts. 1017 00:53:41,942 --> 00:53:43,530 ♪ 1018 00:53:43,565 --> 00:53:46,188 We leave it for your judgment whether this action 1019 00:53:46,223 --> 00:53:50,537 made such officials the accomplices of Hitler in this program 1020 00:53:50,572 --> 00:53:52,850 and whether or not these officials are not 1021 00:53:52,884 --> 00:53:56,267 war criminals in every sense of the term. 1022 00:53:56,302 --> 00:53:58,442 ♪ 1023 00:53:58,476 --> 00:54:00,685 Narrator: Treasury staff titled the document 1024 00:54:00,720 --> 00:54:03,585 "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence 1025 00:54:03,619 --> 00:54:07,209 of this Government in the Murder of the Jews"... 1026 00:54:07,244 --> 00:54:08,417 ♪ 1027 00:54:08,452 --> 00:54:10,212 But Morgenthau, who understood 1028 00:54:10,247 --> 00:54:12,007 his boss better than most, 1029 00:54:12,041 --> 00:54:14,561 toned down the accusatory rhetoric 1030 00:54:14,596 --> 00:54:16,391 and renamed it simply 1031 00:54:16,425 --> 00:54:19,117 "Personal Report to the President." 1032 00:54:19,152 --> 00:54:20,774 ♪ 1033 00:54:20,809 --> 00:54:23,570 Morgenthau's own father, who had been the ambassador 1034 00:54:23,605 --> 00:54:26,055 to what was then the Ottoman Empire 1035 00:54:26,090 --> 00:54:29,473 between 1915 and 1916, 1036 00:54:29,507 --> 00:54:32,614 had tried unsuccessfully to persuade 1037 00:54:32,648 --> 00:54:34,305 President Woodrow Wilson 1038 00:54:34,340 --> 00:54:37,377 to intervene on behalf of hundreds of thousands of 1039 00:54:37,412 --> 00:54:39,552 Armenian civilians who were being 1040 00:54:39,586 --> 00:54:43,314 systematically massacred by Ottoman troops. 1041 00:54:43,349 --> 00:54:44,488 ♪ 1042 00:54:44,522 --> 00:54:46,731 He had called it "race murder." 1043 00:54:46,766 --> 00:54:48,906 ♪ 1044 00:54:48,940 --> 00:54:51,529 Erbelding: Henry, Jr., went to Turkey, 1045 00:54:51,564 --> 00:54:53,497 went to Constantinople, now Istanbul, 1046 00:54:53,531 --> 00:54:58,018 to see his father as all of these events were unfolding. 1047 00:54:58,053 --> 00:55:00,504 He points to that directly to Roosevelt. 1048 00:55:00,538 --> 00:55:02,506 He says, "You remember what my father saw. 1049 00:55:02,540 --> 00:55:04,611 "You remember what I saw in Armenia. 1050 00:55:04,646 --> 00:55:06,786 We can't let this happen again." 1051 00:55:07,718 --> 00:55:09,375 To be the Secretary of the Treasury 1052 00:55:09,409 --> 00:55:12,170 and to be in a position to actually point his friend 1053 00:55:12,205 --> 00:55:14,103 to the past and to say, 1054 00:55:14,138 --> 00:55:16,692 "We have the chance to do it better this time." 1055 00:55:16,727 --> 00:55:17,693 ♪ 1056 00:55:17,728 --> 00:55:18,774 Narrator: After a meeting with 1057 00:55:18,798 --> 00:55:20,800 Morgenthau and Pehle, 1058 00:55:20,834 --> 00:55:26,461 Roosevelt issued an executive order on January 22nd, 1944, 1059 00:55:26,495 --> 00:55:29,291 establishing the War Refugee Board... 1060 00:55:29,326 --> 00:55:33,778 the only government agency created by any of the Allies 1061 00:55:33,813 --> 00:55:35,918 specifically to do what it could 1062 00:55:35,953 --> 00:55:39,336 for the Jews still under Nazi threat. 1063 00:55:39,370 --> 00:55:40,578 ♪ 1064 00:55:40,613 --> 00:55:42,718 Treasury was in charge 1065 00:55:42,753 --> 00:55:44,858 and John Pehle was made director, 1066 00:55:44,893 --> 00:55:47,309 determined to perform what he called 1067 00:55:47,344 --> 00:55:50,312 "a simple life-saving job." 1068 00:55:50,347 --> 00:55:51,520 ♪ 1069 00:55:51,555 --> 00:55:52,670 Pehle: The most important thing 1070 00:55:52,694 --> 00:55:53,867 about the War Refugee Board 1071 00:55:53,902 --> 00:55:56,594 was that it dramatically changed 1072 00:55:56,629 --> 00:55:59,770 the policy of the United States, overnight. 1073 00:55:59,804 --> 00:56:01,427 ♪ 1074 00:56:01,461 --> 00:56:04,775 Erbelding: 5 million Jews have already been killed in Europe. 1075 00:56:04,809 --> 00:56:06,846 But there are millions who are still there, 1076 00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:09,814 who are in hiding, who are in concentration camps, 1077 00:56:09,849 --> 00:56:12,610 who are still, they think, in relative safety, 1078 00:56:12,645 --> 00:56:17,788 who could get out, could be rescued, could cross borders, 1079 00:56:17,822 --> 00:56:21,447 could be kept alive long enough to be liberated. 1080 00:56:21,481 --> 00:56:23,069 ♪ 1081 00:56:23,103 --> 00:56:24,426 Narrator: The work undertaken by the Board's 1082 00:56:24,450 --> 00:56:26,037 representatives in Europe 1083 00:56:26,072 --> 00:56:29,662 was improvisational and clandestine. 1084 00:56:29,696 --> 00:56:33,873 Official U.S. policy forbade paying bribes. 1085 00:56:33,907 --> 00:56:37,152 Pehle's men paid little attention. 1086 00:56:37,186 --> 00:56:38,878 ♪ 1087 00:56:38,912 --> 00:56:40,338 Erbelding: The first thing that the War Refugee Board 1088 00:56:40,362 --> 00:56:41,605 does once it's created is to 1089 00:56:41,639 --> 00:56:43,572 streamline the license process, 1090 00:56:43,607 --> 00:56:45,988 meaning humanitarian aid organizations 1091 00:56:46,023 --> 00:56:49,785 can send money into Europe much easier. 1092 00:56:49,820 --> 00:56:51,487 By the end of the war, the War Refugee Board 1093 00:56:51,511 --> 00:56:54,618 has approved about $11 million in humanitarian aid 1094 00:56:54,652 --> 00:56:56,309 to go into Nazi Europe. 1095 00:56:56,343 --> 00:56:58,898 That money was used to buy guns for the underground; 1096 00:56:58,932 --> 00:57:01,210 it was used to pay off border guards. 1097 00:57:01,245 --> 00:57:03,489 ♪ 1098 00:57:03,523 --> 00:57:04,938 The plight of Jews varied, 1099 00:57:04,973 --> 00:57:06,768 depending on where you were in Europe. 1100 00:57:06,802 --> 00:57:08,262 If you were in France, you might be able to escape 1101 00:57:08,286 --> 00:57:11,566 to the border in Spain or Switzerland. 1102 00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:13,198 And, so, the United States puts pressure on 1103 00:57:13,222 --> 00:57:15,846 border guards in Spain and Switzerland. 1104 00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:17,054 ♪ 1105 00:57:17,088 --> 00:57:18,814 If you were in Romania or Bulgaria, 1106 00:57:18,849 --> 00:57:20,540 you might be able to board a ship 1107 00:57:20,575 --> 00:57:23,819 and make it to Turkey, and then by train to Palestine. 1108 00:57:23,854 --> 00:57:26,063 So, the War Refugee Board works with governments 1109 00:57:26,097 --> 00:57:28,410 to make that process easier. 1110 00:57:28,445 --> 00:57:29,791 ♪ 1111 00:57:29,825 --> 00:57:31,655 And if you're in Poland, you may need 1112 00:57:31,689 --> 00:57:33,829 food packages or documents 1113 00:57:33,864 --> 00:57:35,417 that would allow you to hide, 1114 00:57:35,452 --> 00:57:38,075 so, the War Refugee Board tries to help with that. 1115 00:57:38,109 --> 00:57:41,112 And, so, they had a whole host of different plans 1116 00:57:41,147 --> 00:57:44,426 that had real impact on the lives of the people 1117 00:57:44,461 --> 00:57:45,600 who managed to survive. 1118 00:57:45,634 --> 00:57:49,362 ♪ 1119 00:57:49,396 --> 00:57:51,364 Narrator: Much of the Board's most effective work 1120 00:57:51,398 --> 00:57:55,299 was focused on Hungary, which in early 1944 1121 00:57:55,333 --> 00:57:58,854 was still home to some 800,000 Jews, 1122 00:57:58,889 --> 00:58:02,962 the largest remaining population in Europe. 1123 00:58:02,996 --> 00:58:05,136 Its Regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, 1124 00:58:05,171 --> 00:58:08,208 had been a Nazi ally since 1941, 1125 00:58:08,243 --> 00:58:10,763 when his troops joined the German invasion 1126 00:58:10,797 --> 00:58:13,317 of the Soviet Union. 1127 00:58:13,351 --> 00:58:15,630 [Gunfire, explosions] 1128 00:58:15,664 --> 00:58:17,045 But most of the Hungarian army 1129 00:58:17,079 --> 00:58:20,807 had been destroyed at Stalingrad. 1130 00:58:20,842 --> 00:58:23,361 Because Nazi defeat now seemed inevitable, 1131 00:58:23,396 --> 00:58:26,123 Horthy began secretly exploring whether 1132 00:58:26,157 --> 00:58:29,989 a separate peace with the Allies might be possible. 1133 00:58:31,024 --> 00:58:32,647 When Hitler got word of it, 1134 00:58:32,681 --> 00:58:34,994 he sent in troops to occupy the country 1135 00:58:35,028 --> 00:58:37,824 and insisted that Horthy cooperate in 1136 00:58:37,859 --> 00:58:40,896 ridding Hungary of its Jewish population. 1137 00:58:40,931 --> 00:58:44,279 ♪ 1138 00:58:44,313 --> 00:58:51,010 Between May and July 1944, some 440,000 Hungarian Jews 1139 00:58:51,044 --> 00:58:53,668 would be rounded up and deported. 1140 00:58:53,702 --> 00:58:55,428 ♪ 1141 00:58:55,462 --> 00:59:00,882 338,000 of them were killed immediately at Auschwitz... 1142 00:59:00,916 --> 00:59:04,161 so many that the 4 crematoria were not enough 1143 00:59:04,195 --> 00:59:07,923 and fire pits had to be dug and constantly tended 1144 00:59:07,958 --> 00:59:10,443 to dispose of all the corpses. 1145 00:59:10,477 --> 00:59:12,307 ♪ 1146 00:59:12,341 --> 00:59:15,034 Members of the Polish underground managed to smuggle 1147 00:59:15,068 --> 00:59:19,210 a camera into Auschwitz so that 5 courageous inmates 1148 00:59:19,245 --> 00:59:21,178 could document what was happening to 1149 00:59:21,212 --> 00:59:24,181 the Hungarians and other prisoners. 1150 00:59:24,215 --> 00:59:26,770 [Camera's shutter clicks] While 4 men kept watch, 1151 00:59:26,804 --> 00:59:29,738 a fifth snapped 4 pictures from the hip, 1152 00:59:29,773 --> 00:59:33,017 not daring to take the time to focus. [Camera's shutter clicks] 1153 00:59:33,052 --> 00:59:34,916 The film was smuggled out of the camp 1154 00:59:34,950 --> 00:59:38,782 inside a tube of toothpaste. [Camera's shutter clicks] 1155 00:59:38,816 --> 00:59:40,473 They remain the only photographs 1156 00:59:40,507 --> 00:59:43,580 of the killing process at Auschwitz. 1157 00:59:43,614 --> 00:59:48,619 [Camera's shutter clicks] ♪ 1158 00:59:48,654 --> 00:59:51,518 Meanwhile, in Hungary, the War Refugee Board 1159 00:59:51,553 --> 00:59:54,625 helped orchestrate a massive international series of 1160 00:59:54,660 --> 00:59:58,940 threats and condemnations aimed at persuading Horthy 1161 00:59:58,974 --> 01:00:01,977 to stop cooperating in the killing. 1162 01:00:02,909 --> 01:00:05,256 Then, on July 2nd, U.S. bombers 1163 01:00:05,291 --> 01:00:09,226 hit oil refineries on the outskirts of Budapest 1164 01:00:09,260 --> 01:00:11,193 and dropped leaflets on the city 1165 01:00:11,228 --> 01:00:14,231 promising punishment for perpetrators. 1166 01:00:15,370 --> 01:00:19,823 5 days later, Horthy called a halt to the deportations. 1167 01:00:21,859 --> 01:00:24,966 Hungary's provinces had been emptied of Jews, 1168 01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:30,316 but some 230,000 still survived in Budapest itself, 1169 01:00:30,350 --> 01:00:33,457 subject to persecution, fearful that 1170 01:00:33,491 --> 01:00:37,012 the transports might resume at any time. 1171 01:00:38,393 --> 01:00:41,051 To protect them... and to glean firsthand accounts 1172 01:00:41,085 --> 01:00:43,053 of what was happening in Hungary... 1173 01:00:43,087 --> 01:00:46,332 the War Refugee Board called upon neutral nations, 1174 01:00:46,366 --> 01:00:49,991 including Switzerland, Portugal, and Sweden, 1175 01:00:50,025 --> 01:00:54,340 to expand their diplomatic presence in the country. 1176 01:00:54,374 --> 01:00:57,861 Their diplomats in Budapest began issuing so-called 1177 01:00:57,895 --> 01:01:01,243 "protective documents" to desperate Jews... 1178 01:01:01,278 --> 01:01:05,282 sheets of paper emblazoned with coats of arms 1179 01:01:05,316 --> 01:01:07,594 and peppered with official-looking stamps, 1180 01:01:07,629 --> 01:01:11,944 intended to persuade Hungarian police and German officials 1181 01:01:11,978 --> 01:01:16,569 that the bearer was under international protection. 1182 01:01:16,603 --> 01:01:19,020 Man: It's no coincidence that the War Refugee Board 1183 01:01:19,054 --> 01:01:21,194 ends up making a difference in Hungary 1184 01:01:21,229 --> 01:01:23,610 because that's a, that's a country 1185 01:01:23,645 --> 01:01:26,372 which is a sovereign state, which still has diplomats, 1186 01:01:26,406 --> 01:01:28,650 where a diplomat can be sent in, 1187 01:01:28,685 --> 01:01:30,169 with briefcases full of money, 1188 01:01:30,203 --> 01:01:33,241 and issue documents and make a difference. 1189 01:01:33,275 --> 01:01:35,139 ♪ 1190 01:01:35,174 --> 01:01:38,660 Narrator: On July 9th, a 31-year-old Swedish businessman 1191 01:01:38,695 --> 01:01:41,905 named Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest 1192 01:01:41,939 --> 01:01:44,114 to accelerate that process. 1193 01:01:44,148 --> 01:01:46,599 Appointed a Swedish attache 1194 01:01:46,633 --> 01:01:49,050 but recruited and partially financed 1195 01:01:49,084 --> 01:01:51,052 by the War Refugee Board, 1196 01:01:51,086 --> 01:01:53,779 he saw his mission as carrying out 1197 01:01:53,813 --> 01:01:56,574 an "American program." 1198 01:01:56,609 --> 01:02:00,199 He established hospitals, nurseries, and a soup kitchen, 1199 01:02:00,233 --> 01:02:03,064 issued thousands of protective papers, 1200 01:02:03,098 --> 01:02:05,791 and rented 32 "safe-houses" 1201 01:02:05,825 --> 01:02:07,344 for those who carried them. 1202 01:02:07,378 --> 01:02:09,277 ♪ 1203 01:02:09,311 --> 01:02:11,520 Diplomats from other neutral countries 1204 01:02:11,555 --> 01:02:14,696 also participated in rescue operations, 1205 01:02:14,731 --> 01:02:19,356 most notably the Swiss vice-consul Carl Lutz. 1206 01:02:19,390 --> 01:02:21,116 ♪ 1207 01:02:21,151 --> 01:02:24,671 Soon, some 37,000 Jews were living under 1208 01:02:24,706 --> 01:02:26,673 Swedish and Swiss protection 1209 01:02:26,708 --> 01:02:30,194 in what was called the "international ghetto." 1210 01:02:30,229 --> 01:02:33,991 ♪ 1211 01:02:34,026 --> 01:02:36,097 When Hitler replaced the Horthy government 1212 01:02:36,131 --> 01:02:38,064 with more ardent fascists, 1213 01:02:38,099 --> 01:02:41,102 who resumed the deportation of Jews, 1214 01:02:41,136 --> 01:02:44,243 Wallenberg intervened as often as he could 1215 01:02:44,277 --> 01:02:45,796 to win the release of those with 1216 01:02:45,831 --> 01:02:48,557 protective or forged papers. 1217 01:02:48,592 --> 01:02:51,112 ♪ 1218 01:02:51,146 --> 01:02:55,081 Of the nearly 150,000 Jews in Budapest 1219 01:02:55,116 --> 01:02:56,911 who would survive the war, 1220 01:02:56,945 --> 01:02:59,603 some 120,000 are thought to have 1221 01:02:59,637 --> 01:03:02,261 owed their lives to Raoul Wallenberg 1222 01:03:02,295 --> 01:03:05,643 and his fellow diplomats from neutral nations. 1223 01:03:05,678 --> 01:03:07,714 ♪ 1224 01:03:07,749 --> 01:03:09,130 It is impossible to tally 1225 01:03:09,164 --> 01:03:11,408 how many tens of thousands of lives 1226 01:03:11,442 --> 01:03:13,893 the War Refugee Board saved, 1227 01:03:13,928 --> 01:03:16,723 directly or indirectly. 1228 01:03:16,758 --> 01:03:18,242 ♪ 1229 01:03:18,277 --> 01:03:19,865 Erbelding: These were Americans 1230 01:03:19,899 --> 01:03:22,868 who were really trying to do good. 1231 01:03:22,902 --> 01:03:24,283 ♪ 1232 01:03:24,317 --> 01:03:26,181 And we have forgotten them, in part, 1233 01:03:26,216 --> 01:03:28,805 because we have this longer narrative and trajectory 1234 01:03:28,839 --> 01:03:32,360 in our memory of the United States not doing enough, 1235 01:03:32,394 --> 01:03:34,051 being indifferent, being deceitful, 1236 01:03:34,086 --> 01:03:36,605 not trying to save people. 1237 01:03:36,640 --> 01:03:38,573 There is a group of people in the U.S. government 1238 01:03:38,607 --> 01:03:42,888 who were trying and who saved tens of thousands of lives 1239 01:03:42,922 --> 01:03:44,786 by the end of World War II. 1240 01:03:44,821 --> 01:03:46,167 ♪ 1241 01:03:46,201 --> 01:03:48,238 That is not insignificant. 1242 01:03:48,272 --> 01:03:51,862 ♪ 1243 01:03:51,897 --> 01:03:53,899 [Static] 1244 01:03:54,900 --> 01:03:57,454 Man on radio: This is the BBC Home service. 1245 01:03:57,488 --> 01:03:59,870 Communique number one, issued by 1246 01:03:59,905 --> 01:04:03,667 supreme headquarters allied expeditionary force. 1247 01:04:03,701 --> 01:04:05,220 [Static] 1248 01:04:05,255 --> 01:04:07,878 Dwight D. Eisenhower: People of western Europe, 1249 01:04:07,913 --> 01:04:09,259 a landing was made this morning 1250 01:04:09,293 --> 01:04:11,192 on the coast of France by troops of 1251 01:04:11,226 --> 01:04:13,608 the allied expeditionary force. 1252 01:04:18,371 --> 01:04:21,927 This landing is part of the concerted United Nations plan 1253 01:04:21,961 --> 01:04:23,618 for the liberation of Europe... 1254 01:04:25,792 --> 01:04:29,037 made in conjunction with our great Russian allies. 1255 01:04:30,211 --> 01:04:32,213 I have this message for all of you. 1256 01:04:34,456 --> 01:04:35,768 [Gunfire] 1257 01:04:35,802 --> 01:04:37,839 Although the initial assault may not have been 1258 01:04:37,874 --> 01:04:39,703 made in your own country, 1259 01:04:39,737 --> 01:04:42,671 the hour of your liberation is approaching. 1260 01:04:46,296 --> 01:04:48,229 Man: This concludes the broadcast from 1261 01:04:48,263 --> 01:04:50,162 supreme headquarters allied... 1262 01:04:50,196 --> 01:04:54,718 Girl as Anne Frank: Tuesday, 6 June, 1944. 1263 01:04:54,752 --> 01:04:58,860 "This is D-Day," the BBC announced at 12. 1264 01:04:58,895 --> 01:05:02,864 "This is the day." The invasion has begun! 1265 01:05:02,899 --> 01:05:04,348 ♪ 1266 01:05:04,383 --> 01:05:06,247 The best part about the invasion is that 1267 01:05:06,281 --> 01:05:09,802 I have the feeling that friends are on their way. 1268 01:05:09,836 --> 01:05:13,254 Those awful Germans have oppressed and threatened us 1269 01:05:13,288 --> 01:05:16,982 for so long that the thought of friends and salvation 1270 01:05:17,016 --> 01:05:19,156 means everything to us! 1271 01:05:24,368 --> 01:05:27,509 Narrator: Within 24 hours, the Allies had torn 1272 01:05:27,544 --> 01:05:32,480 a 45-mile gap in Hitler's Atlantic Wall in Normandy. 1273 01:05:32,514 --> 01:05:34,447 ♪ 1274 01:05:34,482 --> 01:05:39,452 More than 150,000 men were already ashore in France, 1275 01:05:39,487 --> 01:05:42,524 and more men and more equipment and supplies 1276 01:05:42,559 --> 01:05:46,390 were coming ashore every day. 1277 01:05:46,425 --> 01:05:50,256 Stern: And then I was suddenly on French soil. 1278 01:05:50,291 --> 01:05:55,606 And a voice from a few hundred yards away, 1279 01:05:55,641 --> 01:05:58,299 one of my buddies, was shouting, 1280 01:05:58,333 --> 01:06:00,853 "Stern, get the hell over here. 1281 01:06:00,887 --> 01:06:02,441 "We've got too many prisoners 1282 01:06:02,475 --> 01:06:05,168 and we've got to have you." 1283 01:06:05,202 --> 01:06:07,722 Narrator: Guy Stern, now a staff sergeant, 1284 01:06:07,756 --> 01:06:10,621 came ashore on D-Day plus three. 1285 01:06:10,656 --> 01:06:13,624 He was part of a special Army intelligence unit 1286 01:06:13,659 --> 01:06:16,973 that included many Jewish refugees trained 1287 01:06:17,007 --> 01:06:21,184 to interrogate enemy soldiers as they surrendered. 1288 01:06:21,218 --> 01:06:24,566 Stern: My own personal incentive was 1289 01:06:24,601 --> 01:06:27,052 if I help shorten the war, 1290 01:06:27,086 --> 01:06:30,710 let's say by an hour, I have a chance. 1291 01:06:30,745 --> 01:06:35,129 If my family somehow escaped 1292 01:06:35,163 --> 01:06:38,339 the same perils as the others, 1293 01:06:38,373 --> 01:06:42,377 I would be there still in the nick of time 1294 01:06:42,412 --> 01:06:45,829 to be their savior. 1295 01:06:45,863 --> 01:06:48,728 [Rumbling] 1296 01:06:48,763 --> 01:06:50,523 Narrator: Over the next 3 months, 1297 01:06:50,558 --> 01:06:53,112 nearly 50,000 Americans 1298 01:06:53,147 --> 01:06:55,321 would die in the struggle to liberate 1299 01:06:55,356 --> 01:06:58,600 western Europe from the Nazis. 1300 01:06:58,635 --> 01:07:00,292 [Explosion] 1301 01:07:00,326 --> 01:07:03,122 As the Allies fought their way inland, 1302 01:07:03,157 --> 01:07:04,986 Guy Stern and his comrades 1303 01:07:05,021 --> 01:07:07,678 would cross-examine hundreds of prisoners, 1304 01:07:07,713 --> 01:07:10,923 gleaning vital information about troop movements 1305 01:07:10,957 --> 01:07:13,857 and the location of industrial targets. 1306 01:07:13,891 --> 01:07:16,791 And they interrogated a Nazi doctor 1307 01:07:16,825 --> 01:07:20,450 who proudly boasted that he had overseen the killing 1308 01:07:20,484 --> 01:07:22,659 of thousands of disabled people 1309 01:07:22,693 --> 01:07:26,249 Hitler had called "unworthy of life." 1310 01:07:27,940 --> 01:07:29,735 Meanwhile, the Red Army, 1311 01:07:29,769 --> 01:07:32,531 which had suffered millions of casualties, 1312 01:07:32,565 --> 01:07:35,120 was moving westward into Poland. 1313 01:07:35,154 --> 01:07:36,880 [Film reel clicking] 1314 01:07:36,914 --> 01:07:40,608 As it did, it came upon the death camp at Majdanek, 1315 01:07:40,642 --> 01:07:45,992 where 18,000 Jews had been murdered in a single day in 1943 1316 01:07:46,027 --> 01:07:50,825 in an operation the SS called the "Harvest Festival." 1317 01:07:52,585 --> 01:07:56,279 The spectacle of hundreds of starving prisoners of war 1318 01:07:56,313 --> 01:07:59,420 the Germans had abandoned and the stark evidence 1319 01:07:59,454 --> 01:08:02,250 of the industrial scope of the Nazi slaughter 1320 01:08:02,285 --> 01:08:04,356 offered Allied correspondents 1321 01:08:04,390 --> 01:08:08,394 their first look at a German killing center. 1322 01:08:10,327 --> 01:08:12,640 Lipstadt: When Majdanek is liberated, 1323 01:08:12,674 --> 01:08:14,607 American reporters are there, 1324 01:08:14,642 --> 01:08:18,749 and they send back reports that are devoid of the doubts 1325 01:08:18,784 --> 01:08:20,579 that were shown when Babi Yar 1326 01:08:20,613 --> 01:08:24,721 was liberated a few months earlier. 1327 01:08:24,755 --> 01:08:27,862 Americans are beginning to get the picture. 1328 01:08:29,346 --> 01:08:32,246 Man: I am now prepared to believe any story 1329 01:08:32,280 --> 01:08:34,006 of German atrocities, 1330 01:08:34,040 --> 01:08:39,045 no matter how savage, cruel, and depraved. 1331 01:08:39,080 --> 01:08:41,255 William H. Lawrence. 1332 01:08:46,018 --> 01:08:47,744 ♪ 1333 01:08:47,778 --> 01:08:50,540 Man on newsreel: 20,000 wounded arriving in New York. 1334 01:08:50,574 --> 01:08:53,750 And there it is, the good old USA... 1335 01:08:53,784 --> 01:08:59,169 Narrator: On August 3, 1944, a 29-ship Navy convoy 1336 01:08:59,204 --> 01:09:01,758 steamed into New York harbor. 1337 01:09:01,792 --> 01:09:04,450 The troop transport "Henry Gibbins" 1338 01:09:04,485 --> 01:09:07,971 carried wounded soldiers and sailors, 1339 01:09:08,005 --> 01:09:12,562 but also aboard were 982 civilian refugees 1340 01:09:12,596 --> 01:09:15,012 belonging to 18 countries, 1341 01:09:15,047 --> 01:09:17,843 chosen from among thousands of refugees 1342 01:09:17,877 --> 01:09:22,675 who had managed to reach Allied territory in Italy. 1343 01:09:22,710 --> 01:09:27,439 Their destination was Fort Ontario, New York. 1344 01:09:27,473 --> 01:09:30,649 Ray Morgan: Under the supervision of the War Relocation Authority, 1345 01:09:30,683 --> 01:09:33,893 this train is bearing 982 refugees 1346 01:09:33,928 --> 01:09:35,516 from Hitler's total war. 1347 01:09:35,550 --> 01:09:37,311 Admitted to the United States... 1348 01:09:37,345 --> 01:09:39,623 Narrator: The rationale for their arrival had originated 1349 01:09:39,658 --> 01:09:42,730 with John Pehle and the War Refugee Board, 1350 01:09:42,764 --> 01:09:44,835 who proposed a trial program 1351 01:09:44,870 --> 01:09:47,459 going outside the quota system 1352 01:09:47,493 --> 01:09:50,945 to bring refugees to camps in the U.S. 1353 01:09:50,979 --> 01:09:54,880 until the war was over and they could return home. 1354 01:09:54,914 --> 01:09:57,020 ♪ 1355 01:09:57,054 --> 01:09:59,747 The White House commissioned a Gallup Poll 1356 01:09:59,781 --> 01:10:04,234 that showed 70% of Americans now supported the idea 1357 01:10:04,269 --> 01:10:08,687 of sheltering refugees from Europe temporarily. 1358 01:10:08,721 --> 01:10:12,622 918 of the refugees were Jewish. 1359 01:10:12,656 --> 01:10:16,142 The rest belonged to various Christian denominations, 1360 01:10:16,177 --> 01:10:18,973 included so that the public would not think 1361 01:10:19,007 --> 01:10:22,873 this was exclusively "a Jewish refugee project." 1362 01:10:22,908 --> 01:10:24,530 ♪ 1363 01:10:24,565 --> 01:10:27,706 To some refugees, it seemed all-too-reminiscent 1364 01:10:27,740 --> 01:10:30,674 of the concentration camps they had escaped... 1365 01:10:30,709 --> 01:10:34,678 run-down barracks walled-in by chain-link fences 1366 01:10:34,713 --> 01:10:37,681 topped with barbed wire. 1367 01:10:37,716 --> 01:10:40,581 But most felt relief and gratitude. 1368 01:10:40,615 --> 01:10:43,169 "This is paradise," one said. 1369 01:10:43,204 --> 01:10:48,658 Another exulted that she now had "a villa on Lake Ontario." 1370 01:10:48,692 --> 01:10:52,282 "This is the first time I have been happy in 11 years," 1371 01:10:52,317 --> 01:10:54,767 said a third. 1372 01:10:54,802 --> 01:10:58,461 A few local citizens resented the foreigners, 1373 01:10:58,495 --> 01:11:01,153 but most townspeople proved friendly. 1374 01:11:01,187 --> 01:11:04,881 Soon, they were passing food and milk, dolls, 1375 01:11:04,915 --> 01:11:07,815 and even bicycles over the barbed wire. 1376 01:11:07,849 --> 01:11:11,336 Refugee children were enrolled in public school, 1377 01:11:11,370 --> 01:11:14,408 the Boy Scouts, and the Brownies. 1378 01:11:14,442 --> 01:11:17,169 Their parents were given day-passes, 1379 01:11:17,203 --> 01:11:20,621 but forbidden to work outside the compound 1380 01:11:20,655 --> 01:11:25,004 so that they would not compete for American jobs. 1381 01:11:25,039 --> 01:11:30,320 The First Lady and Henry Morgenthau's wife visited the refugees. 1382 01:11:30,355 --> 01:11:33,289 Mrs. Roosevelt was moved by the "character" 1383 01:11:33,323 --> 01:11:35,981 which had brought them through so much, she said, 1384 01:11:36,015 --> 01:11:38,880 and privately thought it "perfectly silly" 1385 01:11:38,915 --> 01:11:42,194 that they were required to return home one day. 1386 01:11:42,228 --> 01:11:46,302 And after the war, she would be instrumental in seeing to it 1387 01:11:46,336 --> 01:11:49,443 that all who wished to remain in the United States 1388 01:11:49,477 --> 01:11:51,928 were allowed to do so. 1389 01:11:53,930 --> 01:11:55,794 But for the rest of the war, 1390 01:11:55,828 --> 01:11:59,522 no more refugees outside the limited quotas 1391 01:11:59,556 --> 01:12:04,699 would be offered even temporary shelter in the United States. 1392 01:12:06,149 --> 01:12:07,978 ♪ 1393 01:12:08,013 --> 01:12:10,947 Girl as Anne Frank: I still believe, in spite of everything, 1394 01:12:10,981 --> 01:12:14,053 that people are truly good at heart. 1395 01:12:14,088 --> 01:12:17,988 It is utterly impossible for me to build my life 1396 01:12:18,023 --> 01:12:22,441 on a foundation of chaos, suffering, and death. 1397 01:12:22,476 --> 01:12:26,963 I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness. 1398 01:12:26,997 --> 01:12:29,103 I hear the approaching thunder 1399 01:12:29,137 --> 01:12:31,864 that one day will destroy us, too. 1400 01:12:31,899 --> 01:12:33,763 ♪ 1401 01:12:33,797 --> 01:12:37,698 I feel the suffering of millions. 1402 01:12:37,732 --> 01:12:41,253 And yet, when I look up at the sky, 1403 01:12:41,287 --> 01:12:45,844 I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, 1404 01:12:45,878 --> 01:12:48,398 that this cruelty too will end, 1405 01:12:48,433 --> 01:12:53,369 that peace and tranquility will return once more. 1406 01:12:53,403 --> 01:12:58,546 In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. 1407 01:12:58,581 --> 01:13:01,377 Perhaps the day will come 1408 01:13:01,411 --> 01:13:04,345 when I'll be able to realize them. 1409 01:13:04,380 --> 01:13:07,521 ♪ 1410 01:13:07,555 --> 01:13:10,800 Narrator: The Frank family had managed to evade the Germans 1411 01:13:10,834 --> 01:13:14,666 in Amsterdam for two years and one month. 1412 01:13:15,805 --> 01:13:20,016 But on August 4, 1944, a Nazi officer 1413 01:13:20,050 --> 01:13:23,053 and several Dutch policemen arrested them 1414 01:13:23,088 --> 01:13:26,712 and the other residents of their secret annex. 1415 01:13:26,747 --> 01:13:28,990 They were sent to Westerbork, 1416 01:13:29,025 --> 01:13:31,924 a holding camp in the Netherlands for Jews 1417 01:13:31,959 --> 01:13:34,789 awaiting deportation to the East. 1418 01:13:34,824 --> 01:13:37,827 There, they were housed in Barrack 67 1419 01:13:37,861 --> 01:13:39,449 in the punishment block, 1420 01:13:39,484 --> 01:13:43,764 reserved for those who had been caught hiding. 1421 01:13:43,798 --> 01:13:47,043 Their heads shaved, with too little to eat, 1422 01:13:47,077 --> 01:13:51,116 they were put to work turning parts of downed Allied aircraft 1423 01:13:51,150 --> 01:13:53,221 into useful scrap. 1424 01:13:55,500 --> 01:13:57,053 Trains had been leaving the camp 1425 01:13:57,087 --> 01:13:59,883 for occupied Poland every Tuesday. 1426 01:13:59,918 --> 01:14:02,645 The Frank family was forced to board theirs 1427 01:14:02,679 --> 01:14:06,545 on September 3, 1944, 1428 01:14:06,580 --> 01:14:10,307 along with 1,015 other people. 1429 01:14:10,342 --> 01:14:12,827 ♪ 1430 01:14:12,862 --> 01:14:16,452 Theirs would be the last train from Westerbork. 1431 01:14:16,486 --> 01:14:18,074 ♪ 1432 01:14:18,108 --> 01:14:20,663 It would take them 3 days and two nights 1433 01:14:20,697 --> 01:14:23,217 to reach their destination... 1434 01:14:23,251 --> 01:14:24,943 Auschwitz. 1435 01:14:24,977 --> 01:14:27,393 ♪ 1436 01:14:27,428 --> 01:14:29,844 The Geiringer family had been rounded up 1437 01:14:29,879 --> 01:14:31,708 earlier by the Gestapo 1438 01:14:31,743 --> 01:14:34,918 and deported to Auschwitz as well. 1439 01:14:34,953 --> 01:14:38,266 Geiringer: The Nazis never told you anything. 1440 01:14:38,301 --> 01:14:40,924 So we had no idea where we were going, 1441 01:14:40,959 --> 01:14:42,995 what was going to happen to us. 1442 01:14:43,030 --> 01:14:45,688 And there were some work camps, 1443 01:14:45,722 --> 01:14:48,242 but we were lucky we were sent to Auschwitz 1444 01:14:48,276 --> 01:14:51,452 and not to Treblinka, for instance, 1445 01:14:51,487 --> 01:14:54,662 where the whole transport, no selection, 1446 01:14:54,697 --> 01:14:57,872 whole transport went into the gas chambers. 1447 01:14:57,907 --> 01:15:00,599 So then you had no chance, whatsoever. 1448 01:15:00,634 --> 01:15:02,877 At least, we had a chance. 1449 01:15:02,912 --> 01:15:04,016 ♪ 1450 01:15:04,051 --> 01:15:06,329 But the first terrible thing was 1451 01:15:06,363 --> 01:15:09,746 at arrival, men and women, to different sides. 1452 01:15:09,781 --> 01:15:11,852 That was the first command. 1453 01:15:11,886 --> 01:15:14,993 And you can imagine what scene that was 1454 01:15:15,027 --> 01:15:17,478 because people thought, 1455 01:15:17,513 --> 01:15:19,860 and it did happen, of course, many times, 1456 01:15:19,894 --> 01:15:22,552 that people never, ever saw each other. 1457 01:15:22,587 --> 01:15:26,176 So my mother and father embraced 1458 01:15:26,211 --> 01:15:29,214 and Heinz and my mother and my father and me. 1459 01:15:29,248 --> 01:15:31,043 And my father then did something 1460 01:15:31,078 --> 01:15:33,563 which I remember very clearly. 1461 01:15:33,598 --> 01:15:37,153 He took me by the hands and he said, "Evertje"... 1462 01:15:37,187 --> 01:15:38,913 that's a Dutch name for Eve, 1463 01:15:38,948 --> 01:15:41,882 "Evertje, God will protect you." 1464 01:15:41,916 --> 01:15:46,058 And that was amaz... I was amazed at that 1465 01:15:46,093 --> 01:15:48,613 because he was not really religious. 1466 01:15:48,647 --> 01:15:52,893 But, at that moment, he realized... 1467 01:15:52,927 --> 01:15:54,653 nobody else could do it. 1468 01:15:54,688 --> 01:15:57,622 But, if there is a God, he should... will look after me. 1469 01:15:57,656 --> 01:15:59,244 ♪ 1470 01:15:59,278 --> 01:16:02,074 Yeah. And, then, the men walked away. 1471 01:16:05,353 --> 01:16:08,287 My mother gave me this hat and coat. 1472 01:16:08,322 --> 01:16:11,394 And I didn't want to wear it. It was very hot. 1473 01:16:11,428 --> 01:16:16,675 But she said, "Well, perhaps, it might come in useful later." 1474 01:16:16,710 --> 01:16:21,577 And, then, the camp doctor appeared, 1475 01:16:21,611 --> 01:16:24,234 youngish man, very smart 1476 01:16:24,269 --> 01:16:28,066 with a little stick like a conductor. 1477 01:16:28,100 --> 01:16:31,448 And he looked you over, just a fraction of a second, 1478 01:16:31,483 --> 01:16:35,521 and he conducted you either right or left. 1479 01:16:35,556 --> 01:16:40,872 And because this rim of this hat was big, 1480 01:16:40,906 --> 01:16:43,012 he didn't see how young I was. 1481 01:16:43,046 --> 01:16:45,083 So that was the first miracle. 1482 01:16:45,117 --> 01:16:48,051 They told us with laughing 1483 01:16:48,086 --> 01:16:50,778 that the family you have been separated 1484 01:16:50,813 --> 01:16:53,229 were taken to a shower, 1485 01:16:53,263 --> 01:16:56,059 but it wasn't, of course, a shower, it was gas. 1486 01:16:56,094 --> 01:17:01,099 And within 15 minutes, they were all killed. 1487 01:17:01,133 --> 01:17:03,826 And then, everything was taken away. 1488 01:17:03,860 --> 01:17:05,724 Then we were registered. 1489 01:17:05,759 --> 01:17:07,243 We were all tattooed. 1490 01:17:07,277 --> 01:17:09,141 We were told, "You are not a human being. 1491 01:17:09,176 --> 01:17:12,697 "You're just like cattle, who gets... get a number. 1492 01:17:12,731 --> 01:17:14,284 "If ever we need you, 1493 01:17:14,319 --> 01:17:16,090 you're going to be called out by your number." 1494 01:17:16,114 --> 01:17:19,565 All of our hair was shaved and naked, 1495 01:17:19,600 --> 01:17:21,015 and then they told us, 1496 01:17:21,050 --> 01:17:22,810 "Now it's your turn to go in the shower." 1497 01:17:22,845 --> 01:17:26,262 Of course, we didn't want to go, but we were pushed into it. 1498 01:17:26,296 --> 01:17:29,783 But it was an actual shower. 1499 01:17:29,817 --> 01:17:32,233 We were herded into our barracks, 1500 01:17:32,268 --> 01:17:36,099 which were low, wooden barracks 1501 01:17:36,134 --> 01:17:40,414 with... and a sort of a chimney in the middle. 1502 01:17:40,448 --> 01:17:46,178 And both sides were bunks, 3 high, like cages. 1503 01:17:46,213 --> 01:17:47,732 ♪ 1504 01:17:47,766 --> 01:17:50,562 They told us, "That's where you will spend your night, 1505 01:17:50,596 --> 01:17:52,668 as long as you are alive." 1506 01:17:52,702 --> 01:17:56,913 ♪ 1507 01:17:56,948 --> 01:17:59,088 Narrator: In late October, John Pehle 1508 01:17:59,122 --> 01:18:02,608 received another horrific report from Switzerland. 1509 01:18:02,643 --> 01:18:06,371 It contained firsthand testimony from 3 men 1510 01:18:06,405 --> 01:18:09,201 who had managed to escape from Auschwitz 1511 01:18:09,236 --> 01:18:14,759 and provided meticulous details of what they had seen there. 1512 01:18:14,793 --> 01:18:17,416 Pehle: The Board seized upon this. 1513 01:18:17,451 --> 01:18:19,591 Now we had the eyewitness accounts. 1514 01:18:19,625 --> 01:18:27,599 ♪ 1515 01:18:27,633 --> 01:18:31,292 Narrator: Pehle said the report "ought to be required reading 1516 01:18:31,327 --> 01:18:34,192 for the people of the United States." 1517 01:18:37,229 --> 01:18:39,093 Erbelding: The release of the Auschwitz Report 1518 01:18:39,128 --> 01:18:41,371 is headline news throughout the country. 1519 01:18:41,406 --> 01:18:43,235 ♪ 1520 01:18:43,270 --> 01:18:46,376 These news reports explaining to the American people 1521 01:18:46,411 --> 01:18:48,516 what Auschwitz was and what happened there 1522 01:18:48,551 --> 01:18:51,554 are followed up by op-eds, by columns 1523 01:18:51,588 --> 01:18:55,523 about Auschwitz and what America has to do 1524 01:18:55,558 --> 01:18:58,492 in the wake of all of this information. 1525 01:18:58,526 --> 01:19:01,702 Lipstadt: And the fact that it's released 1526 01:19:01,737 --> 01:19:03,462 by the War Refugee Board. 1527 01:19:03,497 --> 01:19:06,155 It's not being released by a Jewish organization. 1528 01:19:06,189 --> 01:19:09,503 It's not being released, "Rabbi Stephen Wise says." 1529 01:19:09,537 --> 01:19:12,126 It's coming from a governmental source. 1530 01:19:12,161 --> 01:19:15,543 It's much harder to dismiss it. 1531 01:19:15,578 --> 01:19:16,924 ♪ 1532 01:19:16,959 --> 01:19:19,306 Greene: There's a poll in late 1944, 1533 01:19:19,340 --> 01:19:21,101 and the question is asked, 1534 01:19:21,135 --> 01:19:22,906 "Do you believe the Germans are murdering Jews 1535 01:19:22,930 --> 01:19:24,518 in concentration camps?" 1536 01:19:24,552 --> 01:19:26,554 It runs in the "Washington Post." 1537 01:19:26,589 --> 01:19:30,248 76% of Americans by that time believe that it's happening, 1538 01:19:30,282 --> 01:19:32,112 but then they're asked the numbers, 1539 01:19:32,146 --> 01:19:34,493 "How many Jews do you think have been killed?" 1540 01:19:34,528 --> 01:19:38,118 And Americans cannot grasp the scale 1541 01:19:38,152 --> 01:19:40,948 and the scope of the crime. 1542 01:19:40,983 --> 01:19:43,882 It's only one in 5 Americans believe 1543 01:19:43,917 --> 01:19:47,127 that it's more than a million Jews who have been murdered. 1544 01:19:47,161 --> 01:19:50,475 And, by that point, it's more than 5 million. 1545 01:19:50,509 --> 01:19:53,547 ♪ 1546 01:19:53,581 --> 01:19:57,275 Geiringer: Within a day, we were already covered in lice. 1547 01:19:57,309 --> 01:20:00,416 Bedbugs were kind of like a nail, thumbnail, 1548 01:20:00,450 --> 01:20:02,763 little animals with... had legs, 1549 01:20:02,798 --> 01:20:06,422 and they'd cling to your skin and suck your blood. 1550 01:20:06,456 --> 01:20:10,840 And it became very infected and itchy and so on. 1551 01:20:10,875 --> 01:20:15,603 Once a week, we had a shower that was a delousing, 1552 01:20:15,638 --> 01:20:18,952 and you never knew was it gassing or a shower. 1553 01:20:20,194 --> 01:20:22,127 Nobody had any periods. 1554 01:20:22,162 --> 01:20:24,992 It was a blessing 'cause we couldn't cope with that. 1555 01:20:25,027 --> 01:20:28,306 I mean, the toilets were just cement sinks 1556 01:20:28,340 --> 01:20:30,066 with holes in the middle. 1557 01:20:30,101 --> 01:20:32,137 And you had to sit where, usually, 1558 01:20:32,172 --> 01:20:35,761 everything was already filthy from diarrhea. 1559 01:20:35,796 --> 01:20:37,177 And if you didn't sit, 1560 01:20:37,211 --> 01:20:38,937 because you tried to not sit on it, 1561 01:20:38,972 --> 01:20:42,458 you were beaten up to sit in that. 1562 01:20:42,492 --> 01:20:47,325 And the other thing was when you went to work outside, march, 1563 01:20:47,359 --> 01:20:49,499 if you wanted to escape, 1564 01:20:49,534 --> 01:20:51,329 there was no chance to escape. 1565 01:20:51,363 --> 01:20:55,609 The dogs were there, dogs tore you apart, 1566 01:20:55,643 --> 01:20:57,680 killed you, we saw that. 1567 01:20:57,714 --> 01:21:00,441 You were caught when you went out of your line, 1568 01:21:00,476 --> 01:21:02,754 and then you were taken back to the camp 1569 01:21:02,788 --> 01:21:07,207 and there... there was a camp center, a square sort of. 1570 01:21:07,241 --> 01:21:09,899 Each bit of the camp had that. 1571 01:21:09,934 --> 01:21:13,075 And then they erected gallows, 1572 01:21:13,109 --> 01:21:15,905 and we had to watch, we were all called, 1573 01:21:15,940 --> 01:21:17,458 and we had to watch this be... 1574 01:21:17,493 --> 01:21:21,324 person being hanged there, slowly, you know, 1575 01:21:21,359 --> 01:21:23,395 with the tongue coming out of them. 1576 01:21:23,430 --> 01:21:25,328 Of course, you had to watch, 1577 01:21:25,363 --> 01:21:26,778 but, of course, we closed our eyes. 1578 01:21:26,812 --> 01:21:29,298 But even they'd check that you look. 1579 01:21:29,332 --> 01:21:31,093 ♪ 1580 01:21:31,127 --> 01:21:33,785 You know, there were people who just couldn't 1581 01:21:33,819 --> 01:21:35,235 tolerate it any longer 1582 01:21:35,269 --> 01:21:37,202 and they wanted to die. 1583 01:21:37,237 --> 01:21:40,274 And you couldn't even commit suicide, you know? 1584 01:21:40,309 --> 01:21:44,175 You had no string or... or you had no pills or anything. 1585 01:21:44,209 --> 01:21:47,281 You know? So the only thing was to throw yourself 1586 01:21:47,316 --> 01:21:49,283 against electrified barbed-wire, 1587 01:21:49,318 --> 01:21:51,803 and it was strong currents. 1588 01:21:51,837 --> 01:21:54,668 And then, we heard terrible screams, 1589 01:21:54,702 --> 01:21:59,569 and you saw people burning on this wire 1590 01:21:59,604 --> 01:22:03,677 because you're stuck on it, and you went up in flames. 1591 01:22:03,711 --> 01:22:07,025 ♪ 1592 01:22:10,477 --> 01:22:14,205 Narrator: Even before the report about Auschwitz was published, 1593 01:22:14,239 --> 01:22:16,828 Jewish organizations, hoping to save 1594 01:22:16,862 --> 01:22:20,280 the thousands of Hungarians still being sent there, 1595 01:22:20,314 --> 01:22:23,421 had called for the Allies to bomb the railroad tracks 1596 01:22:23,455 --> 01:22:26,355 leading to the camp, 1597 01:22:26,389 --> 01:22:30,497 and then for the bombing of Auschwitz itself. 1598 01:22:30,531 --> 01:22:35,226 Their appeal eventually reached the War Refugee Board. 1599 01:22:35,260 --> 01:22:38,298 Pehle: As a non-military people, 1600 01:22:38,332 --> 01:22:41,715 we were hesitant to press the War Department 1601 01:22:41,749 --> 01:22:45,305 to send bombers, which would otherwise be used 1602 01:22:45,339 --> 01:22:48,825 to bomb German cities, for this purpose. 1603 01:22:48,860 --> 01:22:52,277 We were concerned about the reaction 1604 01:22:52,312 --> 01:22:54,624 of the American people... 1605 01:22:54,659 --> 01:22:55,971 [Gunshot] 1606 01:22:56,005 --> 01:22:59,871 if troops died in this sort of expedition. 1607 01:23:00,976 --> 01:23:06,740 We went into this matter further and with much soul searching, 1608 01:23:06,774 --> 01:23:09,294 because we were very concerned 1609 01:23:09,329 --> 01:23:13,367 that going in we would kill a number of Jews. 1610 01:23:13,402 --> 01:23:14,886 ♪ 1611 01:23:14,920 --> 01:23:17,475 Narrator: But after reading The Auschwitz Report, 1612 01:23:17,509 --> 01:23:20,581 Pehle changed his mind. 1613 01:23:20,616 --> 01:23:22,687 Pehle: The time came where we felt 1614 01:23:22,721 --> 01:23:24,758 that the situation was so desperate 1615 01:23:24,792 --> 01:23:27,347 that we should ask the War Department to do it. 1616 01:23:27,381 --> 01:23:28,900 And we did. 1617 01:23:28,934 --> 01:23:30,971 And not only should the rail lines be bombed, 1618 01:23:31,006 --> 01:23:34,354 but the crematoria should be bombed, too. 1619 01:23:34,388 --> 01:23:35,941 We became capable of doing it 1620 01:23:35,976 --> 01:23:38,013 because Allied troops had advanced far enough 1621 01:23:38,047 --> 01:23:39,566 up the Italian boot 1622 01:23:39,600 --> 01:23:42,051 that we had acquired an old Italian airbase 1623 01:23:42,086 --> 01:23:43,570 at a place called Foggia. 1624 01:23:43,604 --> 01:23:45,917 And if you flew northeast from Foggia, 1625 01:23:45,951 --> 01:23:48,368 you could get a plane to Auschwitz and back 1626 01:23:48,402 --> 01:23:50,232 on a single tank of gas. 1627 01:23:50,266 --> 01:23:52,234 Narrator: But the Allies had already learned 1628 01:23:52,268 --> 01:23:56,376 that railroad tracks could easily be repaired overnight, 1629 01:23:56,410 --> 01:23:59,620 that rail traffic could only be halted permanently 1630 01:23:59,655 --> 01:24:04,798 by waves of airplanes hitting them day after day. 1631 01:24:04,832 --> 01:24:07,801 In the repeated raids that would have been required 1632 01:24:07,835 --> 01:24:12,254 to ensure the destruction of the gas chambers and crematoria, 1633 01:24:12,288 --> 01:24:14,290 hundreds, if not thousands, 1634 01:24:14,325 --> 01:24:16,672 of the people imprisoned in the camps 1635 01:24:16,706 --> 01:24:19,675 would likely have been killed or wounded. 1636 01:24:19,709 --> 01:24:23,679 And Allied aircraft were otherwise engaged... 1637 01:24:25,957 --> 01:24:29,650 first in blasting a way forward for the Allied troops 1638 01:24:29,685 --> 01:24:31,997 through the Normandy hedgerows, 1639 01:24:32,032 --> 01:24:35,932 then destroying bridges to trap the retreating Germans 1640 01:24:35,967 --> 01:24:39,522 and taking out the fuel and armament plants 1641 01:24:39,557 --> 01:24:42,353 that powered the Nazi war machine, 1642 01:24:42,387 --> 01:24:46,150 all military objectives aimed at bringing about 1643 01:24:46,184 --> 01:24:49,291 the quickest possible end to the war. 1644 01:24:51,672 --> 01:24:54,089 Man: 3 planes, 9 o'clock, coming around. 1645 01:24:54,123 --> 01:24:55,849 Keep your eye on them, boys. 1646 01:24:55,883 --> 01:24:59,887 Narrator: More than 52,000 American airmen were killed 1647 01:24:59,922 --> 01:25:03,063 trying to achieve those Allied objectives. 1648 01:25:03,098 --> 01:25:06,515 [Gunfire] 1649 01:25:07,792 --> 01:25:10,277 Man 2: We have an engine on fire. 1650 01:25:10,312 --> 01:25:14,143 [Gunfire] 1651 01:25:14,178 --> 01:25:16,076 Man: Pull her up! 1652 01:25:16,111 --> 01:25:18,009 ♪ 1653 01:25:18,043 --> 01:25:23,911 Hayes: If it had become known in the American public in 1944 1654 01:25:23,946 --> 01:25:27,363 that planes and pilots 1655 01:25:27,398 --> 01:25:30,366 and crews had been lost 1656 01:25:30,401 --> 01:25:35,475 in bombing what was a non-military target, 1657 01:25:35,509 --> 01:25:38,892 that would have not been without repercussions. 1658 01:25:38,926 --> 01:25:42,965 Narrator: The U.S. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy 1659 01:25:42,999 --> 01:25:47,763 dismissed the idea of bombing Auschwitz as "impracticable." 1660 01:25:47,797 --> 01:25:51,180 The mission, he wrote, "would have had a most uncertain, 1661 01:25:51,215 --> 01:25:53,665 if not dangerous effect." 1662 01:25:53,700 --> 01:25:55,633 ♪ 1663 01:25:55,667 --> 01:26:00,189 Greene: The United States is bombing German munitions areas 1664 01:26:00,224 --> 01:26:03,019 4, 5 miles from Auschwitz. 1665 01:26:03,054 --> 01:26:04,573 ♪ 1666 01:26:04,607 --> 01:26:06,368 Would they have hit their target? 1667 01:26:06,402 --> 01:26:10,130 That's... that... that's another question. 1668 01:26:10,165 --> 01:26:12,477 Narrator: So-called "precision bombing" 1669 01:26:12,512 --> 01:26:17,206 during World War II was spectacularly imprecise. 1670 01:26:17,241 --> 01:26:21,141 One study showed that just one bomber out of 5 1671 01:26:21,176 --> 01:26:25,870 hit within 5 miles of its intended target. 1672 01:26:25,904 --> 01:26:29,667 When Allied bombs intended for the I.G. Farben fuel 1673 01:26:29,701 --> 01:26:32,221 and rubber plant several miles away 1674 01:26:32,256 --> 01:26:36,398 accidentally hit inside Auschwitz, killing dozens, 1675 01:26:36,432 --> 01:26:38,641 one man, a Dutch physician, 1676 01:26:38,676 --> 01:26:41,368 testified to the "fear and agony" 1677 01:26:41,403 --> 01:26:44,889 he and his fellow prisoners had felt. 1678 01:26:44,923 --> 01:26:48,893 But others, including the future writer Elie Wiesel, 1679 01:26:48,927 --> 01:26:52,276 later remembered having been willing to be bombed 1680 01:26:52,310 --> 01:26:55,210 if it meant an end to the killing. 1681 01:26:56,383 --> 01:27:00,939 No contemporaneous evidence exists that FDR himself 1682 01:27:00,974 --> 01:27:04,115 was ever consulted about bombing Auschwitz, 1683 01:27:04,149 --> 01:27:07,291 but many years later, John McCloy claimed 1684 01:27:07,325 --> 01:27:09,120 he had spoken with him, 1685 01:27:09,154 --> 01:27:13,711 and that the president had rejected the idea out of hand. 1686 01:27:13,745 --> 01:27:16,023 "They'll only move it down the road a little way," 1687 01:27:16,058 --> 01:27:18,854 he said he remembered the president saying. 1688 01:27:18,888 --> 01:27:20,994 "I won't have anything to do with it. 1689 01:27:21,028 --> 01:27:23,445 "We'll be accused of participating 1690 01:27:23,479 --> 01:27:25,792 in this horrible business." 1691 01:27:25,826 --> 01:27:27,587 ♪ 1692 01:27:27,621 --> 01:27:29,347 Lipstadt: I think they should have, 1693 01:27:29,382 --> 01:27:31,315 not because it would have rescued 1694 01:27:31,349 --> 01:27:33,972 a major portion of the 6 million, 1695 01:27:34,007 --> 01:27:38,874 but as a statement, as a message to the Germans, 1696 01:27:38,908 --> 01:27:42,015 "We know what you are doing. 1697 01:27:42,049 --> 01:27:45,674 "We cannot abide what you are doing. 1698 01:27:45,708 --> 01:27:48,711 This is our response to what you are doing." 1699 01:27:48,746 --> 01:27:51,645 Yes, it could have done that. 1700 01:27:51,680 --> 01:27:53,578 Erbelding: I don't think there's a right answer 1701 01:27:53,613 --> 01:27:56,857 in whether we should have bombed Auschwitz. 1702 01:27:56,892 --> 01:27:58,894 I don't think there's a right answer 1703 01:27:58,928 --> 01:28:01,044 because I don't think there's a way in which we look back 1704 01:28:01,068 --> 01:28:02,622 and think that we did the right thing. 1705 01:28:02,656 --> 01:28:04,900 I think it is one of those tragic questions 1706 01:28:04,934 --> 01:28:08,006 in which we are either the people who knew 1707 01:28:08,041 --> 01:28:09,732 that there was a concentration camp there 1708 01:28:09,767 --> 01:28:11,424 and did not try to bomb it, 1709 01:28:11,458 --> 01:28:13,229 or we knew there was a concentration camp there 1710 01:28:13,253 --> 01:28:14,565 and we bombed it. 1711 01:28:14,599 --> 01:28:16,325 We bombed prisoners, 1712 01:28:16,360 --> 01:28:20,087 we bombed people who might have otherwise survived. 1713 01:28:20,122 --> 01:28:22,883 And that is the tragic question of this is, 1714 01:28:22,918 --> 01:28:26,611 no matter what we did, I think we'd look back 1715 01:28:26,646 --> 01:28:28,372 and... and wonder what happened... 1716 01:28:28,406 --> 01:28:30,788 what would have happened had we done the other thing. 1717 01:28:32,824 --> 01:28:35,655 Narrator: In mid-January 1945, 1718 01:28:35,689 --> 01:28:38,140 the prisoners at Birkenau and Auschwitz 1719 01:28:38,174 --> 01:28:42,109 had begun to hear distant Russian artillery coming closer, 1720 01:28:42,144 --> 01:28:44,560 and then the sound of German vehicles 1721 01:28:44,595 --> 01:28:47,529 beginning to rumble away. 1722 01:28:47,563 --> 01:28:50,773 The last gassing of 1,700 Jews 1723 01:28:50,808 --> 01:28:55,364 had taken place at the end of October 1944. 1724 01:28:55,399 --> 01:28:59,713 Afterwards, the SS blew up and bulldozed all but one 1725 01:28:59,748 --> 01:29:02,371 of the gas chambers and crematoria, 1726 01:29:02,406 --> 01:29:06,444 burned records, and began marching prisoners on foot 1727 01:29:06,479 --> 01:29:10,137 through the snow back toward Germany. 1728 01:29:10,172 --> 01:29:15,522 Between 700,000 and 800,000 survivors from Auschwitz 1729 01:29:15,557 --> 01:29:18,007 and scores of other abandoned camps 1730 01:29:18,042 --> 01:29:20,389 were now staggering along the roads 1731 01:29:20,424 --> 01:29:22,874 or packed into open coal cars, 1732 01:29:22,909 --> 01:29:25,705 retreating ahead of the Soviets. 1733 01:29:25,739 --> 01:29:28,397 Around a quarter of a million would die 1734 01:29:28,432 --> 01:29:31,607 between the first of the year and the war's end, 1735 01:29:31,642 --> 01:29:33,989 exhausted or frozen, 1736 01:29:34,023 --> 01:29:38,649 shot or burned alive by their German guards. 1737 01:29:39,788 --> 01:29:43,688 Some 7,000 people remained at Auschwitz, 1738 01:29:43,723 --> 01:29:46,277 too frail to leave the camp. 1739 01:29:46,311 --> 01:29:50,419 When the marches started, Eva Geiringer's mother Fritzi 1740 01:29:50,454 --> 01:29:53,146 was too weak and ill to move. 1741 01:29:53,180 --> 01:29:55,666 Eva crawled into her mother's bunk, 1742 01:29:55,700 --> 01:29:58,910 and they huddled together against the cold. 1743 01:30:00,464 --> 01:30:04,088 Geiringer: Most people couldn't even leave their bunks anymore. 1744 01:30:04,122 --> 01:30:07,712 They said, "Everybody out. We are going to march. 1745 01:30:07,747 --> 01:30:10,094 "If you are staying, we are going to 1746 01:30:10,128 --> 01:30:13,373 lock up the barracks and burn everything down." 1747 01:30:13,408 --> 01:30:16,618 And my mother was so weak, and it was so cold. 1748 01:30:16,652 --> 01:30:19,759 And I said, "Let's just stay." 1749 01:30:19,793 --> 01:30:21,243 We fell asleep. 1750 01:30:21,277 --> 01:30:23,832 And they must have called out again, "Out," 1751 01:30:23,866 --> 01:30:25,454 and we didn't hear that. 1752 01:30:25,489 --> 01:30:27,145 ♪ 1753 01:30:27,180 --> 01:30:31,149 When we woke up, there was no shouting, no dogs. 1754 01:30:31,184 --> 01:30:33,945 It was very, very empty. 1755 01:30:37,501 --> 01:30:39,468 And then I see out of the gate 1756 01:30:39,503 --> 01:30:43,645 a huge creature with icicles hanging down his face 1757 01:30:43,679 --> 01:30:45,888 and his... and all fur, 1758 01:30:45,923 --> 01:30:49,167 and from the distance, we thought it was a bear. 1759 01:30:49,202 --> 01:30:50,617 But it wasn't. 1760 01:30:50,652 --> 01:30:54,241 It was a Russian scout to investigate 1761 01:30:54,276 --> 01:30:59,557 if the army should fight or if they can just advance. 1762 01:30:59,592 --> 01:31:02,180 And he came in and looked at us, 1763 01:31:02,215 --> 01:31:05,598 and he said, well, he has to go back to report. 1764 01:31:05,632 --> 01:31:07,427 ♪ 1765 01:31:07,462 --> 01:31:10,568 And so, I decided I would go to the men's camp 1766 01:31:10,603 --> 01:31:13,398 to try to find my father and brother. 1767 01:31:13,433 --> 01:31:15,504 ♪ 1768 01:31:15,539 --> 01:31:16,954 It was very, very cold. 1769 01:31:16,988 --> 01:31:19,681 And the fighting was going on around us. 1770 01:31:19,715 --> 01:31:22,753 And I heard bullets going over. 1771 01:31:22,787 --> 01:31:24,582 It took me about 6 hours. 1772 01:31:24,617 --> 01:31:26,964 [Gunshots] 1773 01:31:26,998 --> 01:31:30,588 And I didn't really know where to go. 1774 01:31:30,623 --> 01:31:33,522 But I found it, eventually. 1775 01:31:33,557 --> 01:31:37,146 And I found two people who I had known in Amsterdam. 1776 01:31:37,181 --> 01:31:41,185 And one was... looked very familiar, and I said, 1777 01:31:41,219 --> 01:31:44,084 "I think... I think you... you look... I know you," 1778 01:31:44,119 --> 01:31:46,777 but he looked very gaunt and ashen. 1779 01:31:46,811 --> 01:31:50,056 And it was Otto Frank. 1780 01:31:50,090 --> 01:31:53,300 Narrator: Barely able to walk after a fearful beating, 1781 01:31:53,335 --> 01:31:56,200 Otto Frank, too, had been left behind. 1782 01:31:56,234 --> 01:32:02,240 Nearly 6 feet tall, he now weighed just 114 pounds. 1783 01:32:02,275 --> 01:32:04,311 Geiringer: And the first question, of course, 1784 01:32:04,346 --> 01:32:07,038 "Have you seen my girls and my wife?" 1785 01:32:07,073 --> 01:32:08,937 And I hadn't seen them, 1786 01:32:08,971 --> 01:32:10,673 because, you know, they're all the different camps. 1787 01:32:10,697 --> 01:32:13,735 But he had seen my father and brother. 1788 01:32:13,769 --> 01:32:17,290 So, at that time, I thought, 1789 01:32:17,324 --> 01:32:20,051 "Oh, good. Well, I'm sure they'll be alive." 1790 01:32:20,086 --> 01:32:28,086 ♪ 1791 01:32:42,902 --> 01:32:44,697 Narrator: Otto Frank would later write 1792 01:32:44,731 --> 01:32:46,664 his mother in Switzerland 1793 01:32:46,699 --> 01:32:49,080 to tell her that he had survived. 1794 01:32:49,115 --> 01:32:52,428 ♪ 1795 01:32:52,463 --> 01:32:56,916 Man as Frank: Where Edith and the children are, I do not know. 1796 01:32:56,950 --> 01:33:00,782 We have been apart since September, 1944. 1797 01:33:00,816 --> 01:33:05,200 I merely heard that they had been transported to Germany. 1798 01:33:05,234 --> 01:33:09,411 One has to be hopeful to see them back well and healthy. 1799 01:33:09,445 --> 01:33:14,865 ♪ 1800 01:33:14,899 --> 01:33:16,694 Narrator: Frank would eventually learn 1801 01:33:16,729 --> 01:33:18,731 that he had been misinformed. 1802 01:33:18,765 --> 01:33:21,699 His wife had not been sent to Germany. 1803 01:33:21,734 --> 01:33:24,909 Instead, she had died at Birkenau, 1804 01:33:24,944 --> 01:33:28,879 just 3 weeks before the Soviet Army came. 1805 01:33:28,913 --> 01:33:33,435 To the end, Edith had kept bits of bread beneath her blanket 1806 01:33:33,469 --> 01:33:38,751 in case she somehow saw her husband and daughters again. 1807 01:33:41,685 --> 01:33:45,965 The Soviets transported Otto Frank and Eva Geiringer 1808 01:33:45,999 --> 01:33:48,623 and her mother by truck and train 1809 01:33:48,657 --> 01:33:51,142 to Odessa on the Black Sea. 1810 01:33:51,177 --> 01:33:55,319 Eva's brother and father were still missing. 1811 01:33:55,353 --> 01:33:58,460 The refugees were lodged in a crumbling palace 1812 01:33:58,494 --> 01:34:00,220 overlooking the beach 1813 01:34:00,255 --> 01:34:03,983 and told they would have to stay there until the war ended. 1814 01:34:05,674 --> 01:34:07,400 "Everybody is impatient, 1815 01:34:07,434 --> 01:34:10,161 in spite of daily chocolate and cigarettes," 1816 01:34:10,196 --> 01:34:12,232 Frank wrote in his diary. 1817 01:34:12,267 --> 01:34:15,373 They just wanted to go home. 1818 01:34:15,408 --> 01:34:17,375 ♪ 1819 01:34:17,410 --> 01:34:22,691 As Allied armies converged on Germany in the spring of 1945, 1820 01:34:22,726 --> 01:34:26,315 one by one, they came upon the concentration camps 1821 01:34:26,350 --> 01:34:30,112 that the Reich had tried to keep secret. 1822 01:34:30,147 --> 01:34:32,390 The Soviets, driving westward, 1823 01:34:32,425 --> 01:34:36,774 had already over-run all 6 of the German killing centers 1824 01:34:36,809 --> 01:34:41,054 where more than 3 million human beings had been murdered... 1825 01:34:41,089 --> 01:34:43,643 Auschwitz, Belzec, 1826 01:34:43,678 --> 01:34:45,887 Majdanek, Sobibor, 1827 01:34:45,921 --> 01:34:49,097 Treblinka, Chelmno. 1828 01:34:49,131 --> 01:34:52,307 British and Canadian troops were about to capture 1829 01:34:52,341 --> 01:34:56,207 Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. 1830 01:34:56,242 --> 01:34:58,762 ♪ 1831 01:34:58,796 --> 01:35:00,177 And in early April, 1832 01:35:00,211 --> 01:35:02,973 soldiers of the U.S. 4th Armored Division 1833 01:35:03,007 --> 01:35:05,803 searching for a supposed German headquarters, 1834 01:35:05,838 --> 01:35:07,598 came upon Ohrdruf, 1835 01:35:07,632 --> 01:35:11,050 one of at least 130 satellite camps 1836 01:35:11,084 --> 01:35:15,261 surrounding a far larger one... Buchenwald. 1837 01:35:15,295 --> 01:35:17,125 ♪ 1838 01:35:17,159 --> 01:35:22,889 These camps inside Germany itself were not officially killing centers 1839 01:35:22,924 --> 01:35:25,133 like those in occupied Poland, 1840 01:35:25,167 --> 01:35:29,068 but they were places to which people were sent to die 1841 01:35:29,102 --> 01:35:33,486 after untold hours of forced labor, starvation, 1842 01:35:33,520 --> 01:35:37,801 exhaustion, disease, and hopelessness. 1843 01:35:37,835 --> 01:35:40,079 ♪ 1844 01:35:40,113 --> 01:35:43,254 Among the first Americans to enter Buchenwald 1845 01:35:43,289 --> 01:35:46,326 was an Army private, Benjamin Ferencz, 1846 01:35:46,361 --> 01:35:48,673 who had been assigned to a new unit 1847 01:35:48,708 --> 01:35:53,575 tasked with investigating German war crimes. 1848 01:35:53,609 --> 01:35:56,923 Ferencz: I jumped into my Jeep. I raced there. 1849 01:35:56,958 --> 01:35:59,788 I found the American tank officer 1850 01:35:59,823 --> 01:36:03,447 who had liberated the camp, had gotten there first. 1851 01:36:03,481 --> 01:36:05,621 I said, "I'm out here on orders 1852 01:36:05,656 --> 01:36:08,245 "carrying out a policy of the United States Government. 1853 01:36:08,279 --> 01:36:11,835 "I need 10 men, immediately, to surround the schreibstube, 1854 01:36:11,869 --> 01:36:14,941 the office where the records are kept." 1855 01:36:14,976 --> 01:36:18,082 The crematoria were going; smoke in the air, 1856 01:36:18,117 --> 01:36:20,464 the smell of burning bodies in the air. 1857 01:36:20,498 --> 01:36:23,985 In front of the crematoria, stacks of bones. 1858 01:36:24,019 --> 01:36:26,815 They were human beings. 1859 01:36:26,850 --> 01:36:30,543 And they were so thin that they just looked like bones. 1860 01:36:30,577 --> 01:36:33,132 And they were stacked up in front of the crematoria, 1861 01:36:33,166 --> 01:36:34,547 waiting to be burned. 1862 01:36:34,581 --> 01:36:37,308 ♪ 1863 01:36:37,343 --> 01:36:42,935 That was my introduction to Hitler's plan in action. 1864 01:36:42,969 --> 01:36:46,421 ♪ 1865 01:36:46,455 --> 01:36:50,114 I thought to myself, "It can't be real." 1866 01:36:50,149 --> 01:36:53,221 And it was unbelievable. 1867 01:36:53,255 --> 01:36:56,534 But, it was true, and I knew, of course, it was true. 1868 01:36:56,569 --> 01:37:01,850 ♪ 1869 01:37:01,885 --> 01:37:06,234 Narrator: Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower 1870 01:37:06,268 --> 01:37:08,823 flew in to see for himself. 1871 01:37:08,857 --> 01:37:14,414 ♪ 1872 01:37:14,449 --> 01:37:17,314 When a young GI nervously laughed, 1873 01:37:17,348 --> 01:37:19,557 Eisenhower glared at him, 1874 01:37:19,592 --> 01:37:23,044 "Still having trouble hating them?" he asked. 1875 01:37:23,078 --> 01:37:25,391 "We are told that the American soldier 1876 01:37:25,425 --> 01:37:28,670 does not know what he is fighting for," he said. 1877 01:37:28,704 --> 01:37:32,847 "Now at least he will know what he is fighting against." 1878 01:37:32,881 --> 01:37:35,470 ♪ 1879 01:37:35,504 --> 01:37:37,782 Lipstadt: When Eisenhower sees this, 1880 01:37:37,817 --> 01:37:42,684 he orders that a congressional delegation be brought there, 1881 01:37:42,718 --> 01:37:46,930 and that American editors be brought there. 1882 01:37:46,964 --> 01:37:49,587 And they are shocked. 1883 01:37:49,622 --> 01:37:52,728 And they describe in great detail what they see. 1884 01:37:52,763 --> 01:37:54,627 ♪ 1885 01:37:54,661 --> 01:37:59,011 I think it speaks to the lingering doubts 1886 01:37:59,045 --> 01:38:00,909 that this could be real. 1887 01:38:00,944 --> 01:38:02,083 ♪ 1888 01:38:02,117 --> 01:38:04,637 And it also speaks to 1889 01:38:04,671 --> 01:38:08,813 an inability to put your head around this. 1890 01:38:08,848 --> 01:38:11,782 And I don't say that critically. 1891 01:38:11,816 --> 01:38:16,718 I say that this is something that beggars the imagination. 1892 01:38:16,752 --> 01:38:20,860 This was a murder that was beyond belief. 1893 01:38:20,895 --> 01:38:28,350 And it takes that personal confrontation with the evidence, 1894 01:38:28,385 --> 01:38:33,148 with the remnants, for them to grasp that. 1895 01:38:33,183 --> 01:38:36,048 Narrator: To make sure Americans understood 1896 01:38:36,082 --> 01:38:38,326 the depths of Nazi depravity 1897 01:38:38,360 --> 01:38:40,707 and to make sure future generations 1898 01:38:40,742 --> 01:38:43,400 could never deny what had happened, 1899 01:38:43,434 --> 01:38:47,542 Eisenhower insisted that military personnel in the area 1900 01:38:47,576 --> 01:38:52,788 come and see for themselves what the Nazis had done. 1901 01:38:52,823 --> 01:38:56,516 Stern: We were actually stationed in Weimar, 1902 01:38:56,551 --> 01:39:01,245 and we had heard of the Buchenwald Camp. 1903 01:39:01,280 --> 01:39:04,490 I lagged behind Sergeant Hadley, 1904 01:39:04,524 --> 01:39:08,908 who was probably one of the toughest MP soldier 1905 01:39:08,943 --> 01:39:10,668 I had ever encountered... 1906 01:39:10,703 --> 01:39:12,429 ♪ 1907 01:39:12,463 --> 01:39:16,571 And people told me their stories. 1908 01:39:16,605 --> 01:39:20,299 But it was a skeleton you were talking to. 1909 01:39:23,026 --> 01:39:25,649 I looked at them, and I started... 1910 01:39:25,683 --> 01:39:29,308 I was a hardened soldier by then, 1911 01:39:29,342 --> 01:39:31,931 but I couldn't help myself. 1912 01:39:31,966 --> 01:39:33,760 So, I was crying. 1913 01:39:35,762 --> 01:39:41,527 I looked around and Sergeant Hadley, 1914 01:39:41,561 --> 01:39:44,530 from a Protestant family in Ohio, 1915 01:39:44,564 --> 01:39:49,949 he was bawling like a kid, as I was. 1916 01:39:49,984 --> 01:39:52,503 You couldn't take it. 1917 01:39:52,538 --> 01:39:53,815 ♪ 1918 01:39:53,849 --> 01:39:56,128 But they could. 1919 01:39:56,162 --> 01:39:59,200 The perpetrators who could do such a thing, 1920 01:39:59,234 --> 01:40:03,721 and the victims who had to endure it. 1921 01:40:03,756 --> 01:40:06,621 ♪ 1922 01:40:06,655 --> 01:40:10,038 Narrator: American troops would liberate Nordhausen, 1923 01:40:10,073 --> 01:40:13,731 Flossenberg, Mauthausen, and Dachau, 1924 01:40:13,766 --> 01:40:17,563 the very first of Hitler's concentration camps. 1925 01:40:17,597 --> 01:40:19,530 ♪ 1926 01:40:19,565 --> 01:40:22,188 A GI named Joseph A. Wyant 1927 01:40:22,223 --> 01:40:25,433 used his off-duty time to visit there, 1928 01:40:25,467 --> 01:40:28,091 and then wrote home to his father. 1929 01:40:28,125 --> 01:40:29,989 ♪ 1930 01:40:30,024 --> 01:40:33,303 Man as Wyant: This particular crime has been uncovered, Pop, 1931 01:40:33,337 --> 01:40:35,512 but a worse crime seems to me 1932 01:40:35,546 --> 01:40:37,238 to be the spreading of the thought 1933 01:40:37,272 --> 01:40:39,723 that leads to this type of thing. 1934 01:40:39,757 --> 01:40:41,587 ♪ 1935 01:40:41,621 --> 01:40:45,039 It has happened in mass proportions here in Germany, 1936 01:40:45,073 --> 01:40:48,007 but who knows how far the ideas have spread 1937 01:40:48,042 --> 01:40:50,423 or where else it may break out? 1938 01:40:50,458 --> 01:40:52,529 ♪ 1939 01:40:52,563 --> 01:40:55,532 I tell you, Pop, even more important 1940 01:40:55,566 --> 01:40:57,844 than the punishment of the criminals here 1941 01:40:57,879 --> 01:41:02,608 is the stamping out of their philosophy. 1942 01:41:02,642 --> 01:41:04,782 As I wrote you once before, 1943 01:41:04,817 --> 01:41:07,820 this is not a war between nations, 1944 01:41:07,854 --> 01:41:12,135 but humanity's struggle for the right to exist. 1945 01:41:12,169 --> 01:41:13,895 ♪ 1946 01:41:13,929 --> 01:41:15,586 If you see fit, 1947 01:41:15,621 --> 01:41:18,589 I wish you would show any of your friends this letter. 1948 01:41:18,624 --> 01:41:21,282 Your devoted son, Joe. 1949 01:41:24,216 --> 01:41:26,597 [Man chanting "Ki Mitzion" in Hebrew] 1950 01:41:46,928 --> 01:41:49,586 [All singing in Hebrew] 1951 01:42:05,774 --> 01:42:09,433 Eichhorn: Today, I come to you in a dual capacity... 1952 01:42:09,468 --> 01:42:12,298 as a soldier in the American army 1953 01:42:12,333 --> 01:42:18,304 and as a representative of the Jewish community of America. 1954 01:42:18,339 --> 01:42:21,100 As an American soldier, 1955 01:42:21,135 --> 01:42:24,552 I say to you that we are proud, 1956 01:42:24,586 --> 01:42:27,624 very proud to be here, 1957 01:42:27,658 --> 01:42:31,904 to know that we have had a share in the destruction 1958 01:42:31,938 --> 01:42:36,080 of the most cruel tyranny of all time. 1959 01:42:36,115 --> 01:42:37,841 As an American soldier, 1960 01:42:37,875 --> 01:42:41,638 I say to you that we are very, very proud 1961 01:42:41,672 --> 01:42:45,607 to be with you as comrades in arms, 1962 01:42:45,642 --> 01:42:48,507 to greet you, and to salute you 1963 01:42:48,541 --> 01:42:52,304 who have been the bravest of the brave. 1964 01:42:56,618 --> 01:42:59,000 Narrator: On April 12, the same day 1965 01:42:59,034 --> 01:43:01,796 that Eisenhower had toured Ohrdruf, 1966 01:43:01,830 --> 01:43:06,387 President Roosevelt had died at Warm Springs, Georgia 1967 01:43:06,421 --> 01:43:08,078 with victory in the war, 1968 01:43:08,112 --> 01:43:10,908 for which he'd tried to prepare his countrymen, 1969 01:43:10,943 --> 01:43:13,290 still weeks away. 1970 01:43:19,572 --> 01:43:25,958 On May 8, 1945, the Germans finally surrendered. 1971 01:43:25,992 --> 01:43:29,962 Hitler had killed himself in his Berlin bunker. 1972 01:43:31,688 --> 01:43:33,724 ♪ 1973 01:43:33,759 --> 01:43:36,727 Guy Stern was still in Germany. 1974 01:43:36,762 --> 01:43:41,594 Before going back to America, he returned to his hometown 1975 01:43:41,629 --> 01:43:45,115 to try to find out what happened to his family. 1976 01:43:45,149 --> 01:43:47,117 ♪ 1977 01:43:47,151 --> 01:43:50,362 Stern: I went to Hildesheim. 1978 01:43:50,396 --> 01:43:56,299 I first was overwhelmed by the ruins of many of the things 1979 01:43:56,333 --> 01:43:58,646 that I had looked at with my mother. 1980 01:43:58,680 --> 01:44:00,579 ♪ 1981 01:44:00,613 --> 01:44:04,307 This history was in rubbles. 1982 01:44:04,341 --> 01:44:08,311 ♪ 1983 01:44:08,345 --> 01:44:12,073 Narrator: His mother and father, his brother and sister 1984 01:44:12,107 --> 01:44:15,559 had been deported from the Warsaw Ghetto, 1985 01:44:15,594 --> 01:44:18,286 and Guy never heard from them again. 1986 01:44:18,321 --> 01:44:21,324 ♪ 1987 01:44:23,567 --> 01:44:27,122 Otto Frank and Eva and Fritzi Geiringer 1988 01:44:27,157 --> 01:44:28,676 were still in Odessa 1989 01:44:28,710 --> 01:44:32,645 when word came that the war in Europe was over. 1990 01:44:32,680 --> 01:44:34,992 Eva remembered that at the news 1991 01:44:35,027 --> 01:44:37,063 "the grounds of the palace broke out 1992 01:44:37,098 --> 01:44:40,860 "in unrestrained jubilation, dancing, singing, 1993 01:44:40,895 --> 01:44:44,830 laughing, and drunken declarations of love." 1994 01:44:44,864 --> 01:44:46,832 ♪ 1995 01:44:46,866 --> 01:44:49,835 A few days later, Eva, her mother, 1996 01:44:49,869 --> 01:44:53,217 and Otto Frank boarded a transport ship 1997 01:44:53,252 --> 01:44:55,323 bound for Marseille. 1998 01:44:55,358 --> 01:44:57,670 Eva's mother burst into tears 1999 01:44:57,705 --> 01:44:59,741 at the sight of the white tablecloths 2000 01:44:59,776 --> 01:45:02,986 and neatly laid-out silverware in the dining room. 2001 01:45:03,020 --> 01:45:05,195 The captain promised his passengers 2002 01:45:05,229 --> 01:45:08,371 that they needn't hoard food in their cabins; 2003 01:45:08,405 --> 01:45:10,787 they would have plenty to eat. 2004 01:45:14,308 --> 01:45:16,965 From Marseille, they traveled to Amsterdam 2005 01:45:17,000 --> 01:45:19,623 where they hoped to take up the lives they'd led 2006 01:45:19,658 --> 01:45:22,039 before the Gestapo came for them. 2007 01:45:22,074 --> 01:45:23,662 ♪ 2008 01:45:23,696 --> 01:45:26,389 That would prove impossible. 2009 01:45:29,357 --> 01:45:32,636 Geiringer: My mother got a letter from the Red Cross, 2010 01:45:32,671 --> 01:45:34,397 very cool. 2011 01:45:34,431 --> 01:45:38,021 "Your husband Erich Geiringer, with the birthdate, 2012 01:45:38,055 --> 01:45:41,611 "and your son Heinz, as well, with the date of his birth, 2013 01:45:41,645 --> 01:45:45,684 "died in Mauthausen several days before 2014 01:45:45,718 --> 01:45:49,066 the American Army came to liberate that camp." 2015 01:45:49,101 --> 01:45:50,551 ♪ 2016 01:45:50,585 --> 01:45:54,278 That was for us, and for me, the last straw 2017 01:45:54,313 --> 01:45:57,005 because I always say, I have survived 2018 01:45:57,040 --> 01:46:00,146 because I thought life will go back, eventually, 2019 01:46:00,181 --> 01:46:01,838 how it used to be. 2020 01:46:01,872 --> 01:46:04,979 But when I realized that can never, ever happen again, 2021 01:46:05,013 --> 01:46:08,431 I became very, very depressed. 2022 01:46:08,465 --> 01:46:10,191 That was harder than the camp, 2023 01:46:10,225 --> 01:46:14,885 because, in the camp, I had a purpose, to survive. 2024 01:46:14,920 --> 01:46:19,131 But then I thought, I don't really want to live anymore. 2025 01:46:19,165 --> 01:46:23,825 That was really, really hard for me to accept that. 2026 01:46:23,860 --> 01:46:26,414 Even till this day, I haven't really accepted it, 2027 01:46:26,449 --> 01:46:31,177 especially because my father was such a strong character 2028 01:46:31,212 --> 01:46:34,008 altogether, mentally and physically. 2029 01:46:34,042 --> 01:46:39,289 But I think, probably, Heinz died before him. 2030 01:46:39,323 --> 01:46:41,878 And that must have been for him terrible, 2031 01:46:41,912 --> 01:46:43,914 perhaps to see him die. 2032 01:46:43,949 --> 01:46:46,296 He thought his wife is dead. 2033 01:46:46,330 --> 01:46:49,057 He probably didn't think I could have survived. 2034 01:46:49,092 --> 01:46:52,440 And I don't think he wanted to live on his own. 2035 01:46:52,475 --> 01:46:54,442 I think he just gave up. 2036 01:46:54,477 --> 01:46:57,928 ♪ 2037 01:46:57,963 --> 01:47:03,278 Narrator: On July 18, 1945, Otto Frank finally discovered 2038 01:47:03,313 --> 01:47:06,143 what had happened to his daughters. 2039 01:47:06,178 --> 01:47:09,388 Both had still been alive when he, Eva, 2040 01:47:09,423 --> 01:47:13,150 and Fritzi Geiringer were liberated from Auschwitz. 2041 01:47:13,185 --> 01:47:16,119 But typhus had swept Bergen-Belsen, 2042 01:47:16,153 --> 01:47:19,260 the camp in northern Germany where they'd been sent. 2043 01:47:19,294 --> 01:47:21,089 ♪ 2044 01:47:21,124 --> 01:47:25,611 Both Margot and Anne are thought to have died in February, 2045 01:47:25,646 --> 01:47:28,787 two months before the camp was liberated. 2046 01:47:31,237 --> 01:47:33,516 Geiringer: Otto came to us one day. 2047 01:47:33,550 --> 01:47:35,034 He looked like a ghost. 2048 01:47:35,069 --> 01:47:36,933 And after he left, my mother then said, 2049 01:47:36,967 --> 01:47:38,935 "Well, we have at least each other, 2050 01:47:38,969 --> 01:47:41,178 but this poor man has nobody." 2051 01:47:41,213 --> 01:47:45,182 He was 56 or 57 at that time. 2052 01:47:45,217 --> 01:47:48,323 You know, what has he got to live for? 2053 01:47:48,358 --> 01:47:50,015 ♪ 2054 01:47:50,049 --> 01:47:51,810 Narrator: One of the Dutch Gentiles 2055 01:47:51,844 --> 01:47:55,054 who had hidden the Franks had kept Anne's diary, 2056 01:47:55,089 --> 01:47:58,472 planning to give it back to her when she returned. 2057 01:47:58,506 --> 01:48:02,510 Instead, she gave it to Anne's grieving father. 2058 01:48:02,545 --> 01:48:07,066 He could not bear to read more than a few pages at a time. 2059 01:48:07,101 --> 01:48:08,447 ♪ 2060 01:48:08,482 --> 01:48:10,587 Geiringer: It took him 3 weeks to read it. 2061 01:48:10,622 --> 01:48:12,831 He was so moved by it. 2062 01:48:12,865 --> 01:48:14,867 And he always used to say, 2063 01:48:14,902 --> 01:48:17,111 "I didn't really know my own child." 2064 01:48:17,145 --> 01:48:21,322 He was amazed about what she wrote in it. 2065 01:48:21,356 --> 01:48:23,945 He was so proud of it. 2066 01:48:23,980 --> 01:48:28,502 When he got it, he had no idea about publishing it, 2067 01:48:28,536 --> 01:48:30,262 but a history professor said 2068 01:48:30,296 --> 01:48:32,506 that it's such a valuable document 2069 01:48:32,540 --> 01:48:36,268 about this period, you have to publish it. 2070 01:48:36,302 --> 01:48:40,755 Lipstadt: It gets tremendous attention in this country. 2071 01:48:40,790 --> 01:48:42,550 It's presented on Broadway, 2072 01:48:42,585 --> 01:48:45,277 and then presented in a major Hollywood picture 2073 01:48:45,311 --> 01:48:46,934 as a triumph. 2074 01:48:46,968 --> 01:48:50,662 No one dies in this story. No one is murdered. 2075 01:48:50,696 --> 01:48:53,147 No gas chambers. No shootings. 2076 01:48:53,181 --> 01:48:57,392 No Nazis, till the last scene when they come in. 2077 01:48:57,427 --> 01:49:00,016 It's the story of triumph of a little girl. 2078 01:49:00,050 --> 01:49:01,500 ♪ 2079 01:49:01,535 --> 01:49:03,847 It's a wonderful story. It's a wonderful diary. 2080 01:49:03,882 --> 01:49:06,263 She writes some terrific things in it. 2081 01:49:06,298 --> 01:49:09,646 But it's not the story of the Holocaust. 2082 01:49:09,681 --> 01:49:11,648 It's not the story of the Shoah. 2083 01:49:11,683 --> 01:49:14,099 It's not the story of a genocide. 2084 01:49:14,133 --> 01:49:18,931 I still believe, in spite of everything, 2085 01:49:18,966 --> 01:49:22,141 that people are really good at heart. 2086 01:49:22,176 --> 01:49:24,247 Geiringer: When she said that she still believes 2087 01:49:24,281 --> 01:49:28,527 in the goodness of mankind, I said, "How can she?" 2088 01:49:28,562 --> 01:49:30,184 But she wrote it before. 2089 01:49:30,218 --> 01:49:34,084 If she would have written that after, 2090 01:49:34,119 --> 01:49:35,914 if she would have survived, 2091 01:49:35,948 --> 01:49:37,640 she would not have said that, I think. 2092 01:49:37,674 --> 01:49:40,677 I still think that she wouldn't have said that. 2093 01:49:40,712 --> 01:49:48,443 ♪ 2094 01:49:48,478 --> 01:49:51,067 Narrator: Eva Geiringer's mother Fritzi 2095 01:49:51,101 --> 01:49:54,691 would eventually marry Otto Frank. 2096 01:49:54,726 --> 01:49:58,730 "By the tragedy in both our lives," she remembered, 2097 01:49:58,764 --> 01:50:02,319 "together we found new happiness." 2098 01:50:02,354 --> 01:50:07,255 ♪ 2099 01:50:08,636 --> 01:50:10,707 [Indistinct chatter] 2100 01:50:14,573 --> 01:50:17,162 Man on newsreel: These newsreel and Signal Corps pictures 2101 01:50:17,196 --> 01:50:21,200 were officially recorded for posterity. 2102 01:50:21,235 --> 01:50:24,376 6 furnaces, each holding 3 bodies, 2103 01:50:24,410 --> 01:50:25,998 were used in cremating the dead. 2104 01:50:26,033 --> 01:50:28,207 Don't turn away. Look. 2105 01:50:28,242 --> 01:50:31,970 Horror unbelievable, yet true. 2106 01:50:32,004 --> 01:50:34,386 The vile inhuman beasts took pride 2107 01:50:34,420 --> 01:50:37,113 in their concentration camp at Nordhausen. 2108 01:50:37,147 --> 01:50:38,666 Narrator: By the war's end, 2109 01:50:38,701 --> 01:50:40,841 Americans had seen for themselves 2110 01:50:40,875 --> 01:50:43,429 that the Nazi horrors many had dismissed 2111 01:50:43,464 --> 01:50:47,710 as wartime propaganda were all-too real. 2112 01:50:47,744 --> 01:50:50,885 Man on newsreel: No words can express the world's disgust 2113 01:50:50,920 --> 01:50:53,785 at Germany's organized carnage. 2114 01:50:55,510 --> 01:50:57,488 Mendelsohn: And I remember saying to my mother once, 2115 01:50:57,512 --> 01:51:00,792 I said, "What was it like after the war?" 2116 01:51:00,826 --> 01:51:02,690 ♪ 2117 01:51:02,725 --> 01:51:05,244 She said... 2118 01:51:05,279 --> 01:51:08,592 everyone sat around waiting for news. 2119 01:51:08,627 --> 01:51:10,111 ♪ 2120 01:51:10,146 --> 01:51:12,631 She said it was like a hush in the air. 2121 01:51:12,666 --> 01:51:15,979 ♪ 2122 01:51:16,014 --> 01:51:19,742 Finally, maybe 1946, maybe 1947, 2123 01:51:19,776 --> 01:51:22,020 she came home from school one day, 2124 01:51:22,054 --> 01:51:25,368 and her father was sitting at the kitchen table, 2125 01:51:25,402 --> 01:51:27,750 crying with a letter in his hand. 2126 01:51:27,784 --> 01:51:32,547 ♪ 2127 01:51:32,582 --> 01:51:34,204 And I think that is a scene 2128 01:51:34,239 --> 01:51:38,761 that probably repeated itself all over America. 2129 01:51:38,795 --> 01:51:41,246 Jaeger Mendelsohn: They had just gotten the final word 2130 01:51:41,280 --> 01:51:45,491 that Uncle Shmiel and his 4 daughters and his wife 2131 01:51:45,526 --> 01:51:48,391 had all been murdered. 2132 01:51:48,425 --> 01:51:52,188 And my father carried to the day he died 2133 01:51:52,222 --> 01:51:57,780 the letters that his brother Shmiel had sent... 2134 01:51:59,091 --> 01:52:01,197 because he felt so guilty 2135 01:52:01,231 --> 01:52:05,477 about not being able to get out Shmiel. 2136 01:52:05,511 --> 01:52:08,342 ♪ 2137 01:52:08,376 --> 01:52:10,309 Lipstadt: In many respects, 2138 01:52:10,344 --> 01:52:14,693 Nazi Germany accomplished its goal. 2139 01:52:14,728 --> 01:52:17,351 Didn't accomplish it totally. 2140 01:52:17,385 --> 01:52:20,872 But the Jews have never replaced themselves since then. 2141 01:52:22,943 --> 01:52:27,326 Woman: I have the feeling that we let our consciences 2142 01:52:27,361 --> 01:52:32,228 realize too late the need of standing up against something 2143 01:52:32,262 --> 01:52:35,438 that we knew was wrong. 2144 01:52:36,888 --> 01:52:40,408 We have therefore had to avenge it, 2145 01:52:40,443 --> 01:52:45,413 but we did nothing to prevent it. 2146 01:52:45,448 --> 01:52:47,864 ♪ 2147 01:52:47,899 --> 01:52:50,660 I hope that in the future, 2148 01:52:50,694 --> 01:52:55,492 we are going to remember that there can be no compromise 2149 01:52:55,527 --> 01:53:02,672 at any point with the things that we know are wrong. 2150 01:53:02,706 --> 01:53:04,570 Eleanor Roosevelt. 2151 01:53:04,605 --> 01:53:08,264 ♪ 2152 01:53:08,298 --> 01:53:10,542 Narrator: Tens of millions of human beings 2153 01:53:10,576 --> 01:53:13,407 were killed during the Second World War. 2154 01:53:13,441 --> 01:53:16,548 Some 6 million of them were Jews, 2155 01:53:16,582 --> 01:53:20,345 murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, 2156 01:53:20,379 --> 01:53:24,521 two-thirds of all the Jews who had lived in Europe. 2157 01:53:24,556 --> 01:53:25,937 ♪ 2158 01:53:25,971 --> 01:53:28,905 The war left millions of displaced persons, 2159 01:53:28,940 --> 01:53:33,013 including more than a quarter of a million Jewish refugees 2160 01:53:33,047 --> 01:53:36,016 confined to crowded camps in Germany, 2161 01:53:36,050 --> 01:53:42,436 Austria, and Italy between 1945 and 1952. 2162 01:53:42,470 --> 01:53:46,543 Most were unable or unwilling to return to homes 2163 01:53:46,578 --> 01:53:49,546 that had been destroyed or occupied 2164 01:53:49,581 --> 01:53:53,792 among people who were often openly hostile toward them. 2165 01:53:53,827 --> 01:53:57,796 ♪ 2166 01:53:57,831 --> 01:54:00,488 Lipstadt: It's easy to imagine 2167 01:54:00,523 --> 01:54:03,319 that after the opening of the camps 2168 01:54:03,353 --> 01:54:05,321 and the stories come out of what happened, 2169 01:54:05,355 --> 01:54:09,187 that people realize this is the legacy of antisemitism, 2170 01:54:09,221 --> 01:54:10,705 and they banish it. 2171 01:54:10,740 --> 01:54:12,200 That it's gone, it's over, it's finished. 2172 01:54:12,224 --> 01:54:13,847 But that's not what happens. 2173 01:54:13,881 --> 01:54:16,056 And nothing makes it clearer 2174 01:54:16,090 --> 01:54:21,682 than debates over allowing refugees in. 2175 01:54:21,716 --> 01:54:24,167 Narrator: When asked if their country should now allow 2176 01:54:24,202 --> 01:54:27,515 more refugees than it had before the war, 2177 01:54:27,550 --> 01:54:31,278 only 5% percent of Americans said yes, 2178 01:54:31,312 --> 01:54:34,902 and more than a third said the number should be fewer. 2179 01:54:34,937 --> 01:54:36,421 ♪ 2180 01:54:36,455 --> 01:54:41,357 Between the spring of 1945 and June of 1947, 2181 01:54:41,391 --> 01:54:43,152 because the United States 2182 01:54:43,186 --> 01:54:45,637 continued to enforce its quota system, 2183 01:54:45,671 --> 01:54:51,056 fewer than 15,000 Jewish refugees obtained visas. 2184 01:54:51,091 --> 01:54:53,748 Other countries were no more welcoming. 2185 01:54:53,783 --> 01:54:55,095 ♪ 2186 01:54:55,129 --> 01:54:57,960 And Britain continued to limit immigration 2187 01:54:57,994 --> 01:55:00,859 to Palestine until 1947 2188 01:55:00,894 --> 01:55:05,484 when it turned the region's fate over to the United Nations. 2189 01:55:05,519 --> 01:55:09,005 The UN partitioned it between Jews and Arabs 2190 01:55:09,040 --> 01:55:14,942 and legally and illegally as many as 200,000 European Jews 2191 01:55:14,977 --> 01:55:17,462 made it to the contested land 2192 01:55:17,496 --> 01:55:22,329 that in 1948 became the State of Israel. 2193 01:55:22,363 --> 01:55:25,608 ♪ 2194 01:55:25,642 --> 01:55:30,026 Congress eventually loosened its restrictions somewhat, 2195 01:55:30,061 --> 01:55:32,649 and by 1953 the United States 2196 01:55:32,684 --> 01:55:37,758 would accept some 80,000 Jewish survivors. 2197 01:55:37,792 --> 01:55:39,139 At the same time, 2198 01:55:39,173 --> 01:55:42,832 among the 170,000 Gentile refugees 2199 01:55:42,866 --> 01:55:45,835 also admitted were some former Nazis 2200 01:55:45,869 --> 01:55:49,183 and those who had collaborated with them, 2201 01:55:49,218 --> 01:55:52,324 welcomed during the new Cold War 2202 01:55:52,359 --> 01:55:55,500 because they were anti-Communists. 2203 01:55:55,534 --> 01:55:56,708 ♪ 2204 01:55:56,742 --> 01:55:58,227 Man on newsreel: Here, before a court 2205 01:55:58,261 --> 01:55:59,780 representing world civilization, 2206 01:55:59,814 --> 01:56:01,989 the Nazi hierarchy charged with conspiracy 2207 01:56:02,024 --> 01:56:05,855 against peace and crimes against humanity goes on trial. 2208 01:56:05,889 --> 01:56:07,719 Narrator: As the Allies had promised, 2209 01:56:07,753 --> 01:56:11,447 Nazi leaders were put on trial after the war, 2210 01:56:11,481 --> 01:56:16,107 the first international trial for war crimes in history. 2211 01:56:16,141 --> 01:56:19,973 Like Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels had killed themselves, 2212 01:56:20,007 --> 01:56:25,392 but some other high-ranking co-conspirators were charged. 2213 01:56:25,426 --> 01:56:27,439 Man on newsreel: In the courtroom, the dramatic entry 2214 01:56:27,463 --> 01:56:28,912 of the 8 judges and alternates 2215 01:56:28,947 --> 01:56:30,880 of the International Military Tribunal. 2216 01:56:30,914 --> 01:56:34,401 After 10 months, the longest criminal trial on record, 2217 01:56:34,435 --> 01:56:36,990 they're ready to deliver the verdict. 2218 01:56:37,024 --> 01:56:39,923 Death for 11, prison for 7. 2219 01:56:39,958 --> 01:56:43,030 Justice has caught up with the master criminals. 2220 01:56:43,065 --> 01:56:45,274 ♪ 2221 01:56:45,308 --> 01:56:47,103 The charges we have brought... 2222 01:56:47,138 --> 01:56:51,832 Narrator: There would be 11 more trials over the next 3 years. 2223 01:56:51,866 --> 01:56:53,834 Of having committed crimes against humanity. 2224 01:56:53,868 --> 01:56:56,975 Narrator: Benjamin Ferencz led the prosecution 2225 01:56:57,010 --> 01:57:00,254 of 22 commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, 2226 01:57:00,289 --> 01:57:03,464 using as evidence their own reports 2227 01:57:03,499 --> 01:57:08,711 of mass killings of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. 2228 01:57:08,745 --> 01:57:11,231 Ferencz: I had never tried a case in my life. 2229 01:57:11,265 --> 01:57:14,096 I had very seldom been in a courtroom. 2230 01:57:14,130 --> 01:57:19,135 I had the proof in my hands, a pile of documents. 2231 01:57:19,170 --> 01:57:21,724 And some of them were very specific. 2232 01:57:21,758 --> 01:57:24,451 "Babi Yar, we murdered"... I don't know... 2233 01:57:24,485 --> 01:57:28,386 "33,226 people in two days." 2234 01:57:28,420 --> 01:57:31,354 And they had it all, and I began to add them up. 2235 01:57:31,389 --> 01:57:32,907 And when I reached a million, 2236 01:57:32,942 --> 01:57:36,428 I said, "That's enough. That's enough." 2237 01:57:36,463 --> 01:57:39,190 Narrator: Before the war, there had been no word 2238 01:57:39,224 --> 01:57:41,399 for the crime Nazi Germany 2239 01:57:41,433 --> 01:57:44,712 would commit against the Jewish people. 2240 01:57:44,747 --> 01:57:46,818 Greene: So who gives it a name? 2241 01:57:46,852 --> 01:57:51,409 Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish refugee to the United States, 2242 01:57:51,443 --> 01:57:54,757 who loses 49 members of his own family. 2243 01:57:54,791 --> 01:57:57,932 Narrator: The legal scholar Raphael Lemkin argued 2244 01:57:57,967 --> 01:58:00,901 that a new legal framework, and a new word, 2245 01:58:00,935 --> 01:58:03,973 were needed to hold the Nazis accountable 2246 01:58:04,007 --> 01:58:05,561 for their pre-meditated 2247 01:58:05,595 --> 01:58:09,220 "destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group." 2248 01:58:09,254 --> 01:58:11,222 He labored for a long time 2249 01:58:11,256 --> 01:58:13,983 trying to find just the right word. 2250 01:58:14,017 --> 01:58:17,849 It combined "genos," the ancient Greek word 2251 01:58:17,883 --> 01:58:19,782 for "race or tribe," 2252 01:58:19,816 --> 01:58:24,683 with the Latin word "cide," for killing. 2253 01:58:24,718 --> 01:58:27,617 Ferencz: Genocide, the extermination 2254 01:58:27,652 --> 01:58:31,587 of whole categories of human beings, 2255 01:58:31,621 --> 01:58:35,142 was a foremost instrument of the Nazi doctrine. 2256 01:58:35,177 --> 01:58:40,354 I knew that genocide was not listed as a crime in our statutes. 2257 01:58:40,389 --> 01:58:44,462 But I felt in respect to my knowledge 2258 01:58:44,496 --> 01:58:47,603 of what Raphael Lemkin had been trying to do, 2259 01:58:47,637 --> 01:58:50,192 I deliberately put that in. 2260 01:58:50,226 --> 01:58:51,710 In a manner shocking... 2261 01:58:51,745 --> 01:58:55,438 I also in my concluding remarks, 2262 01:58:55,473 --> 01:58:57,923 I said, "These defendants 2263 01:58:57,958 --> 01:59:01,617 "wrote the blackest page in human history. 2264 01:59:01,651 --> 01:59:05,345 "Life was their toy and death was their tool. 2265 01:59:05,379 --> 01:59:08,279 "If these men be immune, 2266 01:59:08,313 --> 01:59:11,316 "then law has lost its meaning 2267 01:59:11,351 --> 01:59:13,870 and we must all live in fear." 2268 01:59:13,905 --> 01:59:15,320 ♪ 2269 01:59:15,355 --> 01:59:18,599 And I... "the Prosecution rests its case." 2270 01:59:18,634 --> 01:59:22,051 ♪ 2271 01:59:22,085 --> 01:59:26,469 Lipstadt: I think it takes many years for America really 2272 01:59:26,504 --> 01:59:29,023 to step back and fully understand 2273 01:59:29,058 --> 01:59:32,372 that this was a war unlike any other, 2274 01:59:32,406 --> 01:59:35,306 this kind of state-sponsored genocide 2275 01:59:35,340 --> 01:59:37,998 of such mega proportions. 2276 01:59:38,032 --> 01:59:41,795 That understanding really won't happen 2277 01:59:41,829 --> 01:59:47,732 until 1961 and the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. 2278 01:59:47,766 --> 01:59:50,597 Narrator: SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann 2279 01:59:50,631 --> 01:59:54,670 had overseen the deportation of more than a million Jews 2280 01:59:54,704 --> 01:59:59,226 to ghettos and killing centers in occupied Poland. 2281 01:59:59,261 --> 02:00:01,953 Israeli agents had captured him 2282 02:00:01,987 --> 02:00:04,231 from his hiding place in Argentina 2283 02:00:04,266 --> 02:00:08,925 and brought him to Israel to stand trial in 1961. 2284 02:00:08,960 --> 02:00:10,513 [Speaking foreign language] 2285 02:00:10,548 --> 02:00:12,032 Translator: And they took both of them 2286 02:00:12,066 --> 02:00:14,655 and the two others and all 4 were shot 2287 02:00:14,690 --> 02:00:16,450 in the back of their head. 2288 02:00:16,485 --> 02:00:18,083 And the bullets came out of their forehead. 2289 02:00:18,107 --> 02:00:22,456 Woman: I felt him take the child from my arms. 2290 02:00:22,491 --> 02:00:28,048 The child cried out and was shot immediately. 2291 02:00:28,082 --> 02:00:29,463 ♪ 2292 02:00:29,498 --> 02:00:33,295 Narrator: More than 100 survivors spoke. 2293 02:00:33,329 --> 02:00:36,677 Their testimony, candid, harrowing, 2294 02:00:36,712 --> 02:00:38,921 and televised around the world, 2295 02:00:38,955 --> 02:00:42,373 gave millions of Americans a deeper understanding 2296 02:00:42,407 --> 02:00:48,206 of the horror of what was now being called the "Holocaust." 2297 02:00:48,241 --> 02:00:53,763 And poured kerosene and petrol under those Jews 2298 02:00:53,798 --> 02:00:57,284 and set fire to all the Jews... 2299 02:00:57,319 --> 02:00:58,837 ♪ 2300 02:00:58,872 --> 02:01:01,357 While they were in their prayer shawls... 2301 02:01:01,392 --> 02:01:03,221 holding their prayer books, 2302 02:01:03,256 --> 02:01:05,465 in supplication to God. 2303 02:01:11,367 --> 02:01:13,093 [Ship's horn blows] 2304 02:01:13,127 --> 02:01:14,829 Lyndon B. Johnson: This bill that we will sign today 2305 02:01:14,853 --> 02:01:17,097 is not a revolutionary bill. 2306 02:01:17,131 --> 02:01:20,894 Yet it is still one of the most important acts 2307 02:01:20,928 --> 02:01:25,864 of this Congress and of this administration. 2308 02:01:25,899 --> 02:01:31,525 For it does repair a very deep and painful flaw 2309 02:01:31,560 --> 02:01:34,494 in the fabric of American justice. 2310 02:01:35,633 --> 02:01:40,465 It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong 2311 02:01:40,500 --> 02:01:43,848 in the conduct of the American Nation. 2312 02:01:43,882 --> 02:01:46,989 Narrator: In October 1965, 2313 02:01:47,023 --> 02:01:49,923 after more than 40 years of dogged effort 2314 02:01:49,957 --> 02:01:52,960 by New York Congressman Emanuel Celler, 2315 02:01:52,995 --> 02:01:57,448 Congress passed an immigration bill that finally abolished 2316 02:01:57,482 --> 02:01:59,691 the discriminatory quota system 2317 02:01:59,726 --> 02:02:01,831 based on "national" origins 2318 02:02:01,866 --> 02:02:05,870 that had denied sanctuary to so many desperate people 2319 02:02:05,904 --> 02:02:10,461 trying to flee Hitler in the years before the War. 2320 02:02:10,495 --> 02:02:14,430 But the bill imposed limits on people from the Americas, 2321 02:02:14,465 --> 02:02:15,845 who had gone back and forth 2322 02:02:15,880 --> 02:02:18,607 across the border for generations, 2323 02:02:18,641 --> 02:02:21,437 and it still made no provisions 2324 02:02:21,472 --> 02:02:24,129 for most of the world's refugees. 2325 02:02:24,164 --> 02:02:25,752 ♪ 2326 02:02:25,786 --> 02:02:27,857 The President of the United States 2327 02:02:27,892 --> 02:02:32,759 held the signing ceremony at the Statue of Liberty. 2328 02:02:32,793 --> 02:02:35,865 Johnson: This measure that we will sign today 2329 02:02:35,900 --> 02:02:38,972 will really make us truer to ourselves 2330 02:02:39,006 --> 02:02:43,010 both as a country and as a people. 2331 02:02:43,045 --> 02:02:48,706 It will strengthen us in a hundred unseen ways. 2332 02:02:48,740 --> 02:02:52,606 And today we can all believe that the lamp 2333 02:02:52,641 --> 02:02:56,334 of this grand old lady is brighter today 2334 02:02:56,369 --> 02:03:01,857 and the golden door that she guards gleams more brilliantly 2335 02:03:01,891 --> 02:03:06,448 in the light of an increased liberty 2336 02:03:06,482 --> 02:03:11,694 for the people from all countries of the globe. 2337 02:03:11,729 --> 02:03:14,179 [Applause] 2338 02:03:14,214 --> 02:03:17,355 ♪ 2339 02:03:17,390 --> 02:03:22,222 Irvin Painter: Americans are now coming to terms with our past. 2340 02:03:22,256 --> 02:03:23,706 ♪ 2341 02:03:23,741 --> 02:03:25,743 What we have over and over and over again 2342 02:03:25,777 --> 02:03:28,987 in American history is on the one hand, 2343 02:03:29,022 --> 02:03:34,303 this stream of white supremacy and antisemitism. 2344 02:03:34,337 --> 02:03:38,065 It's a big stream, and it's always there. 2345 02:03:38,100 --> 02:03:42,173 And sometimes it bubbles up and it shocks us, 2346 02:03:42,207 --> 02:03:48,144 and it gets slapped down, but the stream is always there, 2347 02:03:48,179 --> 02:03:50,595 and we should not be shocked, 2348 02:03:50,630 --> 02:03:53,391 we should not think, this is not America. 2349 02:03:53,426 --> 02:03:55,980 It is. 2350 02:03:56,014 --> 02:03:59,052 Snyder: This thing that people call white supremacy, 2351 02:03:59,086 --> 02:04:01,468 that's not some marginal thing. 2352 02:04:01,503 --> 02:04:03,263 You have to look back and say, 2353 02:04:03,297 --> 02:04:07,094 "How can we change so that we really can be a republic, 2354 02:04:07,129 --> 02:04:09,787 or really can be a democracy?" 2355 02:04:09,821 --> 02:04:11,996 If we're going to be a country in the future, 2356 02:04:12,030 --> 02:04:14,274 then we have to have a view of our own history, 2357 02:04:14,308 --> 02:04:16,794 which allows us to see what we were. 2358 02:04:16,828 --> 02:04:20,901 And we can become something different. 2359 02:04:20,936 --> 02:04:23,007 And then we have to become something different 2360 02:04:23,041 --> 02:04:25,112 if we're going to make it. 2361 02:04:25,147 --> 02:04:27,287 ♪ 2362 02:04:27,321 --> 02:04:29,220 Jeff Pegues: 2,400-word manifesto 2363 02:04:29,254 --> 02:04:32,844 is filled with hatred for Blacks, Hispanics, Jews... 2364 02:04:32,879 --> 02:04:35,191 Woman: He wanted to start a race war as you say... 2365 02:04:35,226 --> 02:04:39,230 Donald Trump: My first hour in office, those people are gone. 2366 02:04:39,264 --> 02:04:42,682 These cultures are changing us, we are not changing them. 2367 02:04:42,716 --> 02:04:44,891 Crowd chanting: You will not replace us! 2368 02:04:44,925 --> 02:04:46,662 Stephanie Ramos: Hundreds of white nationalists 2369 02:04:46,686 --> 02:04:49,033 storming the University of Virginia. 2370 02:04:54,107 --> 02:04:56,350 Ellison Barber: We now know one person has died 2371 02:04:56,385 --> 02:04:58,352 in addition to those 5 in critical condition. 2372 02:04:58,387 --> 02:05:00,538 Lulu Garcia-Navarro: 11 Jewish worshippers have been killed 2373 02:05:00,562 --> 02:05:02,011 at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. 2374 02:05:02,046 --> 02:05:04,082 A man has been charged with hate crimes 2375 02:05:04,117 --> 02:05:05,981 and could face the death penalty. 2376 02:05:06,015 --> 02:05:08,708 He was reportedly motivated by conspiracy theories 2377 02:05:08,742 --> 02:05:11,227 about Jewish leaders and immigration. 2378 02:05:11,262 --> 02:05:12,746 [Gunshots] 2379 02:05:12,781 --> 02:05:14,172 Chuck Todd: And we're trying to figure out 2380 02:05:14,196 --> 02:05:15,922 what's happening on the Senate floor. 2381 02:05:15,956 --> 02:05:17,693 Josh Letterman, tell us what's going on outside. 2382 02:05:17,717 --> 02:05:19,729 Letterman: We are watching a situation that has gotten 2383 02:05:19,753 --> 02:05:22,100 much and much more tense. 2384 02:05:22,135 --> 02:05:24,137 ♪ 2385 02:05:24,171 --> 02:05:25,587 Let's go! 2386 02:05:25,621 --> 02:05:29,349 [Indistinct shouting] 2387 02:05:29,383 --> 02:05:30,799 [Crowd cheering] 2388 02:05:30,833 --> 02:05:33,146 Crowd: Treason! Treason! 2389 02:05:33,180 --> 02:05:37,909 Treason! Treason! Treason! Treason! 2390 02:05:41,119 --> 02:05:44,157 The institutions of our civilization 2391 02:05:44,191 --> 02:05:46,021 are under tremendous stress. 2392 02:05:46,055 --> 02:05:49,576 I'm not necessarily saying they're gonna go 2393 02:05:49,611 --> 02:05:50,957 in the same direction, 2394 02:05:50,991 --> 02:05:52,551 but they could go in the same direction, 2395 02:05:52,579 --> 02:05:55,133 because institutions are just conventions, 2396 02:05:55,168 --> 02:05:58,205 and as soon as somebody says... flips a switch and says, 2397 02:05:58,240 --> 02:06:00,000 "Oh, it's OK to shoot grandmothers 2398 02:06:00,035 --> 02:06:02,624 "in a cemetery on Sun... you know, on a Saturday 2399 02:06:02,658 --> 02:06:05,765 and then go to church on Sunday." 2400 02:06:05,799 --> 02:06:09,872 The fragility of civilized behavior 2401 02:06:09,907 --> 02:06:12,530 is the one thing you really learn. 2402 02:06:12,565 --> 02:06:16,258 'Cause these people who we now see in these photographs, 2403 02:06:16,292 --> 02:06:19,330 these sepia photographs, and they're receding into time, 2404 02:06:19,364 --> 02:06:23,714 they're no different, no different from us. 2405 02:06:23,748 --> 02:06:26,924 You look at your neighbors, the people at the dry cleaners, 2406 02:06:26,958 --> 02:06:28,615 the waiters in the restaurant. 2407 02:06:28,650 --> 02:06:31,687 That's who these people were. Don't kid yourself. 2408 02:06:31,722 --> 02:06:34,241 ♪ 2409 02:06:34,276 --> 02:06:38,280 Stern: We have seen the nadir of human behavior, 2410 02:06:38,314 --> 02:06:43,941 and we have no guarantee that it won't recur. 2411 02:06:43,975 --> 02:06:48,290 If we can make that clear and graphic 2412 02:06:48,324 --> 02:06:53,502 and understandable, not as something to imitate, 2413 02:06:53,536 --> 02:06:59,163 but as a warning of what can happen to human beings, 2414 02:06:59,197 --> 02:07:06,446 then, perhaps, we have one shield against its recurrence. 2415 02:07:06,480 --> 02:07:08,690 [Bird squawks] 2416 02:07:12,521 --> 02:07:20,521 ♪ 2416 02:07:21,305 --> 02:08:21,390 Do you want subtitles for any video? -=[ ai.OpenSubtitles.com ]=-